Regarding State Dinners

I think I need say at the outset that like Evan in Evan Almighty, God is the initiator while I tend to be the dullest tool in the shed.  The moment that I get a big head, God will cut me loose.  So rather than having a President with help from above, you will have a 74 year-old dullard as your quarterback at the Superbowl. So when I am President, DON’t kiss my ass because that always gives me a big head.







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Wayne Steps Up to the Plate (with Connie's Permission)

There comes a moment to decide: Will I enter the arena rather than sitting back anonymously in the stands, or will I. ..fighting back tears and with the full knowledge that I will be found ridiculous and absurd by some and a dangerous psycho ego maniac by others.. to step up and frankly say I think I have been called by God for this very hour to do what I can to help the last best hope for humanity to endure.

And to be frank with you, the Ways of God are so beyond my understanding that I am forced to proceed with faith and trust and the firm assurance that He loves me and that I will forever be sustained by Divine love both unseen and that seen in the countenances of those mortals who deeply care for me.  At some point--say when a loved one is trapped in a house afire--that one must.. MUST stop worrying about whether one’s hair is properly combed or that one is even only half dressed and strike out into plain view with trust that those who know the power of love will understand that there is really nothing to apologize for.

This is how I see our tragedy at this present hour.  A large portion of the American people are born into a web of meanness and even now suffer abuse.  The pain is so deep that mental defenses become necessary even to survive.  Now we see the harvest—the grapes of wrath.  We lucky ones raised in a web of love (those “pocket book issues” can be an astonishingly secondary factor) must do what we can to help those hurting and to relieve their suffering…yet we must not allow them to commit suicide by collapsing civilization upon themselves and others.

My plan if God chooses to affirm it is to run for President of the United States.  Relax, you will not see me insult your hearts and minds by thinking you will not vote for me unless I flood the airways with self-serving propaganda or that you will not vote for me unless I visit a saloon in your town so you can get near enough to smell my armpits (I have a strong ego, but frankly I consider a few things over the top.)

My plan is to get with others so that we can plan regular nationally televised sessions to seriously exam those things that most hurt our country. Most importantly you will hear from experts that know up close and personal what the factors of pain are and how the it has caused suffering in their own lives. You will encounter life stories most will find almost beyond belief.  The days of “wink, wink” are over so much as I can influence it.

I plan to stay pretty much in Saint Pete so you can get to know some of my friends and the little heaven many of us experience here in work and play.  Saint Pete is one of those towns where people discuss in a doorway at some length who will have the honor and privilege of going through last.

My motto is: “It is not what you know, but who you know.”  You will get to know ordinary folk with wisdom and talent that will astound you.  There may well not be a national convention. But should there be one, it will be a small-town affair with covered dish dinners, song fest, and maybe a meeting or two--if we can find a willing church small enough to accommodate us.









[An institution of religion is in no way to be a national state religion.  But you will never persuade that our nation can thrive and survive without humility before our Providence/Creator and sincere practice of the Golden Rule.  (A great sense of fun and play--even at menial tasks--also serendipitously fortifies our health with creative showers of Amazing Grace.)]

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I here include a portion of a previous blog (the link following quotation leads to original page).

Today I announce a long-term ambition that has held me over the years – I have always wanted to be president of the United States. Did you chuckle, did you laugh? I think that's very understandable given a royally statuesque view of the presidency. (Someone once called by the kid nickname “Wiener” should better know their place.)  It is has taken me many years to develop an answer to these chuckles.  And that answer is: “Your view of the presidency is way too small.”

Many people yearn for a transformational president. I yearn for a president that has been transformed. Transformed that is by experience, education, work, and (the most important of all other than faith)—by the deep implantation within their innermost core of gratitude for the vast array of human resources and talent widely on display, but sometimes hidden but assuredly always there. Such assurances come by personal, intimate loving relations with at least some individuals outside one’s own circumscribed conventionality.  It is only then that one understands that the labels one pastes on others is directly reflective of one's own impoverished humanity.

https://www.wayneblogs.com/2017/10/breaking-news.html

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Take Me to Your Leader

Isaiah 11:6 New King James Version (NKJV)

⁶ “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,
The leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
The calf and the young lion and the fatling together;
And a little child shall lead them.

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The God-Awful Sentiment of Tough Love vs Taffy Love Our Hearts Desire

              

I wouldn’t give 2 Cents for Tough love—it always implies “or else”.  Or else what…..water boarding?

No I want and ONLY count as love Taffy Love – that means we will stick together until……..

Michael Moore asked a question once that continues to play in my mind as something relevant to many (certainly not all) aspects of American life.  He ask why is America so mean?   In my mind this applies to both the government and enterprise sectors.  It boils  down in my view to our too ready assumption that charity and tough love are equivalent. When I consider the meaning of charity I think of Taffy Love.  Lincoln pleaded for charity in the context of many thousands of brother against brother battlefield casualties. (Consider if Lincoln instead had incited all to wield tough love billy clubs.)  Say, I greet in the street someone who killed my best friend,  It is much easier for me to use tough love in public policy formation as it relates to this individual rather than charity and taffy love.  But taffy love is where Jesus would have us. (See his Beatitude address.)  Taffy Love requires grace from God to empower us whereas Tough Love assumes we are god.

[Prison "Correction" is an absurdity.  Consider the phenomenon of your own perception.  Is it not an affront and insult to you personhood to imply that you are a toggle switch which can be flipped from side to side by a domineering authority?  As Americans I think we ought not exchange the Golden Rule for a swagger stick concealed within a blind of patronizing professionalism and camouflage.]

I can tell you right here and now that our enemies' dream of a degenerate America will be realized unless Taffy Love replaces Tough Love as a mantra of government and business . The bottom line of “you’re fired NFL player" or the seemingly universally applicable "lock-her-up"is an appeal to retributive tough love. It is incumbent upon each of us to determine whether Lincoln or Trump is more in accord with the values underlying our Constitution.  Zooming down to the family unit, what do we most yearn for and need?...the retributive and transactional tough love inherently foreboding banishment.........or its obverse.....taffy love that abides unconditionally through thick and thin.

 I recognize some would consider the following music videos of deplorably low IQ and despicably weak of character and for losers only.  What do you think?  Believe me when I say your determination in this matter will be of final importance....I repeat... of FINAL importance.

                                                   

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The New Jerusalem (with Brief Words from Our Sponsor)

Matthew 6:9-13 J.B. Phillips New Testament

 And then, when you pray, don’t be like the play-actors. They love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at street-corners so that people may see them at it. Believe me, they have had all the reward they are going to get. But when you pray, go into your own room, shut your door and pray to your Father privately. Your Father who sees all private things will reward you. And when you pray don’t rattle off long prayers like the pagans who think they will be heard because they use so many words. Don’t be like them. After all, God, who is your Father, knows your needs before you ask him. Pray then like this—‘Our Heavenly Father, may your name be honoured; May your kingdom come, and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day the bread we need, Forgive us what we owe to you, as we have also forgiven those who owe anything to us. Keep us clear of temptation, and save us from evil’.

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I encourage that you view the following video in it’s entirety.  Humor can make serious points while simultaneously imbued with no less than Holy Grace.  Note remarks regarding evil towards end of speech.   Certainly to the extent that America has a special role in the human family, it is not based on power or a scrooge-sequestered pile of gold, but rather that we avoid evil most effectively when we set aside the damnable evil of self-righteousness.  We can avoid religious wars in America (and this includes the temptation to see opponents as bogymen rather than as people made from the same cloth as we ourselves.) Lincoln advised us to have charity (goodwill)l for all—simply another way of saying that never should conflict—even a civil war—separate us from seeing our own flawed likeness in the composition of others. 

Since as a follower of Jesus, I will never deny that evil exits, yet I often remember that we are called to act in a world that gives new opportunities to love ourselves and others in new ways in each sweep of time.  For example, many tools are available for helping ourselves and others today that were unavailable 2000 years ago.—antibiotics…one example of many. 

I have commented before that in my view America remains deeply committed to equality—not to enforce uniformity but to encourage opportunity for each of us to excel in whatever unique purpose each of us is assigned.  Of course , the Golden Rule and a sense of humility . is a simple requirement for our democracy:  e pluribus unum (out of many, one: motto of the U.S., appearing on most U.S. currency and on the Great Seal of the United States.
(Dictionary.com) 

Much of what is evil can been seen more helpfully through the lens of camouflage behavior.   Think about it—when I lie to you—”no doctor, I have not been picking at this pimple..."it is because I desire to hide the truth, basically not unlike using camouflage in deer hunting.  Therefore, perhaps, rather than see an opponent as a lying bogyman, it could be more fruitful to study the nature and mental processes  of camouflage within our mental structure.

Even though we like to think of America as a unique laboratory of creativity and love, never for a second should we see ourselves as anything other than an equal member  of the human family worldwide.  In my view, informality is the American expression of authenticity ( lack of camouflage) to the maximum extent possible without triggering hurtful treatment of others. 

 [Suggested possibilities for "Hot Button" emotional issues--examine that which most deeply offends us--that which would slime-ball those who succored and sustained us in childhood.]

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Mr. Republican—Is This Really Who You Are?

I like to honor the Eisenhower years.  Though I was very young, a neighbor of ours at the time was an Eisenhower loyalist.  I don’t know much about Eisenhower, but primarily that he was one who helped achieve defeat of the Nazi’s and was instrumental in development of the interstate highway system.  He also backed up Civil Rights actions when necessary with government troops.  So then, this memory of Mr. Republican is strongly positive, and I cherish it.  But now I suppose Mr. Republican is Donald Trump—a deceptive man whose primary aim is to cloak dishonesty and greed in a wrapper of plain speaking—a made-to-order threat for American culture since a key component of that culture is the strong attractiveness of the archetypal individual who speaks out without fear or favor—who stands on bedrock fact caring nothing for puffs and spin.

I think the Republican party began to decay when it placed power ambitions above the bedrock of American values most essentially epitomized in the Bill of Rights and the concept of institutional/individual limitations.  The single most dangerous threat that power poses is the human vulnerability to the resolute drive to achieve absolute invulnerability.  I must repeat an old, old personal story to show you what I mean.  The story is true, but an imaginary character I will then introduce I will leave to your thoughtful discernment and judgment as to the nature of its reality.

In the early 60’s my Dad and I settled down after supper to watch the evening news on TV.  The top story showed images of police dogs and water hoses directed at Alabama blacks.  I said something about “niggers.”  Dad looked at me for a moment in silence, then he slowly almost painfully said:  “Son, I never want to hear you say that again.”  Of course, now on looking back, the one thing that epitomizes the courage, integrity, and love of my father is this scene forever burned into memory.

Now I would like to re-run that scene but with a Republican-Southern Strategy father—a father who feared losing me so much that he would shamelessly pander to my worst prejudices.  So back to the scene on that un-air-conditioned night in a small southern town….. I said something about “niggers.”  Dad looked at me for a moment and said:  "Son, never say that in front of mama.” and he gave me a wink.

So, my Republican-Father became the party of many, many winks over the years whether regarding the sacredness of Constitutional government, equal opportunity for all, effective regulation of business and finance, respect for facts and objectivity, committing demagogic certainty in the face of limited human knowledge, and I must say at last, even perverting the Golden Rule itself…quietly chortling within that he who makes the rules gets the gold.  It seems to me that Trump is the start of the final decay of the Republican party.  The next step must lead to reform and the frank acknowledgement of its horrific transgression in winking at racial prejudice rather than working to transcend it--which would have been the highest compliment the Republican Party could have bestowed upon us.

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To Malik and Friends

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla -- Police are investigating a shooting that occurred on Sunday. Officers responded to 13th Avenue South near M.L.K. Jr. Street South in St. Petersburg at around 2:45 p.m. Sunday.

Police say a 19-year-old was found in an alley shot. The man was transported to the hospital and died at the hospital.

Investigators say it is too early to know if the shooting was random, but they do believe it was an isolated incident.

The victim has been identified as Malik Oliver.

https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/region-south-pine

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My Godson DeAngelo and I were having sandwiches at Subways late Sunday afternoon.  He became quiet and sad; his eyes began to water.  He told me why.  Malik had been shot and killed that afternoon. It was a tipping point for an idea perhaps old but new to me.

Why not a memorial for victims of gun violence in our nation's capitol similar to the Vietnam Memorial?  Of course it would require constant updating since guns in America remain a constant pollutant of the mind.  

Vietnam Memorial

How bad is US gun violence? ....

More Americans have died from guns since 1968 than in all the wars in US history.

Gun violence in the US isn’t just bad, it’s uniquely bad in terms of the number of lives that are affected by it and how rare such violence is in a wealthy country…

Other wealthy countries don’t have as many guns as the US. They don’t have as many gun deaths as the US. The cumulative number Comparisons can help us to understand scale. Since 1968, when these figures were first collected, there have been 1,516,863 gun-related deaths on US territory. Since the founding of the United States, there have been 1,396,733 war deaths. That figure includes American lives lost in the revolutionary war, the Mexican war, the civil war (Union and Confederate, estimate), the Spanish-American war, the first world war, the second world war, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Gulf war, the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, as well as other conflicts, including in Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Somalia and Haiti.
(Source: The Guardian)

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A blog I penned that defines despot justice as usurpation of a basic state function.  I've needed to refer to it much too often.

https://www.wayneblogs.com/2017/11/but-i-repeat-myselfthe-sad-results.html

Further discussed and illustrated here: 
https://www.wayneblogs.com/2018/02/extant-legacies-of-dysfunctional-human.html

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