I know it is Sunday and we shouldn’t be negative, yet it needs to be said. And yes I don’t like name calling, but there is no other way to say it. People need to hear it whether they like it or not.

 If you do not like to travel, you are an idiot.

 

It doesn’t matter what you like, go see it, go visit it, go do it. Our life on planet earth is too short not to digest as much of it as you can. God created a beautiful planet and mankind has added some wonderful things too.

 

And yes I know we should put the beauty of the Creator first, but honestly I don’t think God minds if you explore what he gave us.

And I hate it that for too many they consider travel a luxury. And that is a shame. Obviously travel is not a “right” but it should be available and affordable to the masses. There is a whole host of political problems that is preventing people from traveling, so we need to find a way to balance this, yet for now, people need to find a way.

Travel is education, relaxation, awe inspiring, socializing, meeting new people, see different cultures, new food, new sights, new activities, new scenery, new tastes, new excitement and more. If some of that seems redundant, it is not. Sights and scenery can be different completely and need to be experienced to be understood.

And yes travel to do what hobbies or interests or whatever you like. Go fishing, yet fish in many rivers and lakes, same as for camping, go to different campsites. If you like mountains, go see many. In North American alone you definitely have years of travel plans to make with all our mountain ranges from Canada to Mexico from the Pacific to the Atlantic. If you love adventure, you can never do it all. If you love water parks and amusement parks, go wild. You cannot even begin to see enough beaches. And if you are the person that says, well all that looks the same. You aren’t traveling, you are going through the motions. Stop, look listen smell taste and breath it all in. You will see and enjoy the differences. And while you do what you like do something different also along the way. If you enjoy camping, go to a museum every now and then. If you love museums go fishing every now and then. There are a million ways you can mix it up.

So go!

I love beaches, cannot get enough of them, but not one beach looked like another. Not one wave I jumped over was the same as the one behind it because I experienced it. The morning walks through the shallow surf always brings a moment of joy and peace. I saw wide sandy beaches, beaches with rock formations, small beaches, tourist trap beaches, beaches with large waves and others with small waves, white sand, black rocks, beaches with steep drop offs or some you can walk out way too far and there is more to see. I love listening to the waves after dark, what a great way to go to sleep. And I have seen much more than beaches.

I implore you to travel. I wish I say could the right dynamic words to make you drop what you are doing and go right now.

I love getting in the car and going. Summer family vacations were something I thank God I gave our kids. We drove. We flew. We went. You should too. And to this day the better half and I do not feel fulfilled unless we travel at least once a year. We can be broke and make bad financial decisions and still go. Yes, honestly we go no matter what our financial situation. And we have paid for it in more ways than one afterwards. We don’t regret it.

And times we have gone with enough financial security that every moment was pure exhilaration, pure fun, pure enjoyment, pure relaxation or whatever else may have been the reason for going.

With all the hate and madness in our daily news lives and political shenanigans going on, you need to do something that brings you happiness and joy.  And looking at all the pretty pictures on your computer is not traveling. You need to go. I always rant and rave about how we can do better, yet today I rant and rave to try and convince you to do something better for yourself. Please do.

Cheers

It is going to get ugly. It is going to get stupid. And it is going to be beyond expensive.

 

And I bet some of you know up front what I am talking about here.

 

Yes the Senate race in Texas will show us just how bad our politics have become. I know some Democrats will say we have nominated a worthwhile person. And maybe so, yet have you seen him. He is about to be taken apart by one of the ugliest politicians around. Not ugly in looks, (well) but ugly in human values. And the entire MAGA wing of the Republican party and possibly some other Republicans are going to spend the next few months denigrating Talarico beyond belief.

Why? Well first they don’t have any public policy to mention or tout. They just don’t have squat. There only hope is Trump steals the election. Second they have the mentality of childish bullies.  I could say middle school bullies, but they don’t rise to that level. Absolutely nothing to do, but make fun of someone because they are weaker than diarrhea. They talk tough, but honestly they all go crying to the world every time someone calls them out. The entire Trump and crony playbook is name calling. That is it.

The other issue is Talarico is a Democrat and I am gathering somewhat of a very liberal Democrat. This is Texas. That won’t fly well with many swing voters because most of them spend the day trying to decide which conservative they like better and liberal policies will get them to close their ears faster than aforementioned diarrhea goes through your system.

Talarico cannot sit idly by and let the insults fly. He will be forced to fight which will be better for him than trying to sell his policy ideas in Texas, yet once he goes low, the spiral to the bottom is just unstoppable.

So we here in Texas are about to get hundreds of millions of dollars (I wonder a billion?) of political ads where one guy will stubbornly try to take the high road and the other will keep going lower hoping to keep Donnie boy interested in him. The end result will be brutal no matter who wins. Politics in this country are already bad enough, partisanship bleeds our sanity out and this race will become the epitome of campaign and political failure.

I just hope for some strange and mad reason everyone in Texas wakes up and votes entirely third party. Unfortunately the party I like doesn’t have a candidate. I hate not voting so I will probably vote for who knows who right now. I guess I have to wait and see what the ballot looks like. It is sad. Our once proud nation on its 250^th birthday has devolved so fast sane people cannot find a real choice.

And if you actually look at this election and what it will become, you will get an idea of why I have been saying for 45 years we need new parties.

Two posts for the price of one: A) Is MAGA nihilistic? B) And this upside down world is beyond tiring

 

So part A is a widely discussed set of madness from both conservative and liberal writers. You can find articles on this topic from the Atlantic to the (pacific, sorry couldn’t resist) New York Times to the Bulwark to the Guardian and more. And even a website called the Conversation.

So why bother adding to this list of esteemed writers if this has been dissected before? I don’t know, but maybe it just helps to understand that one third of this country has no direction except it thinks it does, yet others include many thoughts, hate, apathy, or as on the Conversation, the author references Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky saying: “explored what happens to society when people who rise to power lack any semblance of ideological or moral convictions and view society as bereft of meaning.” Trump feels it has meaning, meaning for him. Or Tom Nichols saying the movement is less about policy or compromise and more about pure destruction and political anger. Or how about in the New Republic the article talks about the rule-breaking approach of Trump administration figures, arguing their actions are performance-driven rather than goal-driven. And this to me is more about greed than nihilism.

And this last statement is part of the problem. Where does the apathy of some meet the greed of others? And maybe it isn’t apathy, but a complete throwing in of the towel to society can be better way to say, which is more nihilistic. Apathy is lack of caring whether it be a better world, or a better person while nihilism is complete dismissal of life or what it offers in general if you want my distinction.

But you didn’t ask for that, so let’s move on. Nihilism is the philosophical belief that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. So yes it is a step further from reality than apathy. Yet does MAGA truly meet this definition? I do not think so.

There are subsets of thinking behind nihilism that also do not describe MAGA. Some of these are the core principal mentioned above, moral, cosmic or epistemological nihilism. That last one is a mouthful, anyway they all pretty much say the same thing, there is no knowledge and it doesn’t matter what you do to keep it super simple.

Now Trump’s administration demonstrates moral nihilism by definition, but really they are either power driven or greed driven. They care, but for all the wrong things morally.

MAGA wants something I just do not think they know what they want. This is probably what causes this confusion around nihilism. And whatever they want they are motivated by some type of hate partly caused by Democrats and partly by Fox News. Yet to say they don’t care or have no compass, yet it may not be pointing north, that isn’t the case. Does what they want have meaning? If not then you can apply some nihilistic tendencies? I think buried deep there is some meaning. Now it may be based on principles antagonistic to our country’s values even though wrapped in patriotic fervor. In fact some of it is antagonistic to our values, but they believe lies that let them think they are the patriots. The problem is why they believe these lies, yet the reason is not because they are nihilistic.

So all you great writers time to get out the pen and paper and try to figure out what is driving them. Something is and until we figure that out and counter balance it correctly this MAGA movement ripping up our country is too entrenched for us to be able to have a rational government. Hence we are stuck with the charlatan Trump and all the destruction he is doing to our country until you great thinkers throw out another philosophy to muse on.

Or another words, dare I say……… we need something new. The old ways are dying before our eyes. MAGA is just one monstrous symptom of the underlying moral decay cancer eating away at our country that some of us are tired of watching. MAGA is not the disease, it is a part of the body showing the disease.

 

And now for B:

That moral decay is what is right side up right now in our country. There are answers to our problems, even good ones. Until we find the leaders who are willing to stand up to the monsters we slowly rot and the greatest government experiment on the planet turns to mush.

And yes I know there are a few voices trying, yet until they break through the madness of social media, the loud quiet of so many Americans who spend more time trying to budget than pay attention to what is causing their budget morass we are in trouble.

What is wrong is up and what is right is buried deep beneath the wrong. And for those of you who follow my second blog on Substack, you know we live here on earth, where some are headed to the City of God, while others live in the city of man. My creek for the moment is why can’t we sail through the city of man and do the work of the moral high ground. There are hints we can. So how do we claw our way back to the earth and bury the demons that do not want us to do what is right? And you do not have to believe in demons to see the upside down aspect of our world right now. I just ask you to open your eyes and realize change won’t happen until we get the courage to confront the demons of greed, power, lust for earthly things and more. There is nothing wrong with being successful, it is appreciating what opportunities you were given and allowing others to share in the beauty of what we are given.

Cheers

After fifty years the Democrats are starting to wake up

 

I am including a link to an article that says everything I have been saying for decades, maybe not in the same words, but generally speaking.

The democrats have been clueless for a long time. This article is couched that the Democrats have sucked up to Wall Street and more, yet overall it says the Democrats quit being Democrats and to me that is basically why I have been calling them clueless elitists. 

I am including the article for reference. Since I am a conservative I tend to fear too much government spending especially with the enormous debt we are carrying so I cannot jump on the policies in the article. Yet it is the Democrats actually trying to do something again and some of the ideas are workable if managed well.

Republicans whether Reagan, RINO or MAGA will immediately denounce these ideas because they are now incompetent when it comes to governing. That is the one talking point Democrats have had for years that is correct. Otherwise and this article calls it out indirectly neither party has cared for the vast majority of Americans for an extremely long time. The article even references how Trump won in 2016 by appealing to the working class in the rust belt. Of course that is well known history, yet people especially Democrats have glossed over that for years.

So have some people in the elite DC circles and elite press circles starting to wake up to what has been obvious for decades. We need new parties. On occasion I have said if either the Republicans or Democrats get it together and change then that would work too.

Apparently or maybe that may be happening if you read this article. I need to see more. Again as a conservative I would rework some of their ideas, but at least they are doing more than lip service and whining. They are putting some work into change.

We will see what happens. Maybe we can claw something together from the ashes of the Republican party that Trump is burning down. And finally go forward putting the people of this country first.

Whether liberal or conservative we need to get money out of politics which includes as the article mentions getting rid of super PACS and even more, stricter rules on lobbyists, (if you try to eliminate them you will get too many lawsuits around freedom of speech) and stop gerrymandering all together. That has done more to prop up the duopoly and stifled true representation of the people. Make the candidates earn their seat and we will get better governance and policy.

Here is the link:

This phony Democrat got blown out of the water — and that's terrifying for Trump | Opinion

Cheers

Trump is not a new problem

 

Trump is a new version of an old problem.

Basically I consider myself an average college educated person and I have no idea what that means. I say that though because I have a point later on to make.

First I still read and am working on one project that in actuality is a very intense study. Much more than I am sure I wanted to undertake, yet as I get older I do not want my brain to rot so I am making the effort. You can find it on Substack along with this blog. In working on that project I am reading quite a bit beyond the book I am studying. I mainly comment as a journal what I learn from the reading about the book.  Occasionally I take side trips just to discuss related thoughts and topics in general.

As part of the reading I bought the book “the Political and Social Ideas of St. Augustine”. I am not going to discuss St. Augustine’s ideas in this post.

Reading through the introduction there were two paragraphs that hopefully shed some light on my frustration with trying to get people to understand why we need change in our country. Or actually may be helping me understand why no one wants to listen.

Here is part of one paragraph from the introduction to the book mentioned above written by Herbert A. Deane:

“…In quiet times men tend to take for granted the state and the order and security that it provides. After a period of stable government and security for life and property, they are tempted. To regard peace and order as “natural” and “given” and to forget that, to a great extent, they are results of elaborate, delicate contrivance.”  This is footnoted and references Thomas Hobbes “Leviathan”

Why it matters to me is that we have been in quiet times so maybe what I have been saying for the last forty years had no interest in the academic world or academia. And I say we have been in quiet times for decades probably starting with the 1950’s. Yes I know we had Vietnam, the protests, the Nixon administration and resignation, the cold war, the post cold war and more. Yet for all that happened most Americans including the working class had a sense of security of life and property. People were able to obtain a decent life for themselves. There was nothing that truly shattered their world view.

 

So let’s go to the next paragraph in the introduction:

“When, however, men face serious difficulties which the traditional political and social  system seems unable to solve, when conflicts between groups, classes, regions, or religious sects within the society become so intense that consensus evaporates, and above all, when a crisis of the most fundamental kind undermines the body politic because traditional beliefs, attitudes, and values no longer command virtually automatic assent from most members of the society, thoughtful men are once more driven to the effort to examine the bases of social and political order and to suggest new answers to the questions of politics.”

Are we at this point? Obviously you know I am going to say we are at some juncture here or I wouldn’t be writing on this topic.

And there are two situations where the body politic is no long receiving assent from most members of society or we are ascending to that point.

One of the two is the AI problem which I am not going to address in this post. It is a problem that will definitely cause us to examen where we are in our society and it is rushing at us faster than we can cope.

The other problem is the more traditional problem of economic and political endeavors. And the Trump problem is not new. He is just the updated version of this problem and that is elitism is taking over the country and the body politic. Trump himself is more the catalyst to the problem than the actual problem. Elitism has been building in this country for a few decades, but not until recently with Trump’s false promises for the working class has it been thrust into our faces with what is really going on with his grift and corruption.

The other way elitism has taken over is how our Congress is controlled by lobbyists and large donors.

Elitism that causes the elitists to try and control all aspects of our lives only for their benefit eventually creates dynamic social change. I think most people are beginning to see we are well into this dynamic playing out.

My anger rests in the fact I saw this coming.  And this goes back to me confessing the I am an average college educated person. All the academia stood in their ivory towers and few professed nothing but ignorance about what was happening starting in the 1980’s until now with the slow gradual shift to elitist self-serving policy.

I was not educated enough to ridicule the academic elitists to cut through their need to sound superior to us in what they said was wrong with our country. Their ignorance led to a social revolt of the working class buying into Trump’s nonsense. I just saw that the two parties had created a duopoly that was becoming self-serving for their own power and becoming beholden to an elite class.

And yes I know I was not the only one who saw this coming, but now that we are sitting on the cusp  of possible major social change I am mad because I screamed at people there was an easier solution twenty years ago.

I screamed we needed new parties without being able to cut through the morass of people not affected by what was coming. Again it goes back to the “quiet time” when men took for granted the social order.

We see now the hate being played out by the very people losing to the elitists that is directed by the elitist mentality of pitting democrats and republicans as two sides and each side must win. All the while the two sides are actually the same side, the American people. And again this has been pointed out for decades by more capable people. And again this fell on deaf ears by large chunks of academia and politicians because they existed in that quiet time where some semblance of prosperity existed.

And to me, I get angrier because this can be fixed. Our country can regain the quiet time (well except for the AI problem developing) by going back to educating the people what I have been saying. Lose the partisanship in our politics, take money out of our elections, either force the duopoly into developing new leadership and ideas or create new parties to do such. We are still at a point where drastic social upheaval change is not needed. This isn’t going to last much longer though.

And the irony is that the elitists upending our society would still benefit from us reclaiming our (the people’s) interests in our government, economy and society.

As long as we have a market economy there will be rich people/elitists. That isn’t the problem, it is their control of our lives that is the problem. We created a government that can hold that in check. We let the “quiet times” blind us to the need for constant vigilance.

So now I ask you do we let this wonderful country slip into moral decay due to the powerful thinking they are above us? Or do we do our diligence and reclaim the basic and fundamental aspects of our government, society and economy and continue this wonderful experiment called the United States of America?

And yes I am reading St. Augustine’s City of God, yet that did not cause this sudden understanding of our moral decay. I saw this coming in the 1980’s and have been screaming in the woods ever since. My current readings including City of God only make my anger stronger since I am seeing how easy it is to reclaim our lives and it falls on the ignorant ears of our so called intellectuals that are blindly stupid.

I hope we can reclaim it all before the elitists destroy the fabric of us as people and then have AI destroy them.

How bad is it or how bad it is (or how bad am I)

 

Yes, contradictory title on purpose.

I am stuck. I want to believe the best so much so that I was traveling home from a bookstore with a copy of “The Political and Social Ideas of St. Augustine: Whether that has anything to do with my mind set, well it doesn’t. I haven’t read the book yet.

I bring it up because as a good Christian we are taught, yes even required to help the poor. So it was coincidental that I had this book when I saw what I saw.

As I was driving there was a long line of cars and then I saw the sign. It was a volunteer group, looked like it was at a church giving away food. Yes big sign free food bank, they even had one of those large blow up figurines dancing in the wind. This line was off to one side on a side road of sorts. I drove by the line of cars.

What I noticed is what bothered me. Almost every car in that line was better than mine, some even much better. I have a mid size SUV a few years old. It is nothing fancy, but it is paid off so we keep it. What I saw was some pretty nice cars in this line. And sure poor people or working class people can by chance have a nice car, but not in droves.

So how bad is it that people that appear to be well off are in a food bank line. It can happen. Who knows. The markets could crash dramatically and all sorts of people are hungry. Food inflation could become so rampant that everyone needs help except the very few. I haven’t heard of anything dramatic, yet it was worrisome to see. Do I need to rush out right now?

Or could our society be so shallow that people who don’t need resources still take advantage of this opportunity and the people that need it are left out? I don’t know. The visual didn’t look good. I haven’t heard of a complete market crash. Sure the well off might be able to react quicker than the poor if the economy tanks so they would be first in line, yet even that sounds like people are getting screwed.

I could be completely wrong. There was traffic so I was going slow, but I only saw free food bank signs. Hopefully the people I saw were donating and I am way off base. I didn’t see a sign that said donation line or anything similar. Every car seemed to be in the same line. I won’t say it cannot happen, yet donation lines don’t usually queue up. Usually you see them open and people come and go through out the day. Hopefully I just missed something. Like I mentioned I want the best, but the ten to fifteen seconds I drove by seemed odd. The line was long. It circled back around the building where they were lining up. This was the middle of the day so people are out, but also people are at work and doing other things. You just don’t expect busy people to spend time in line unless something is needed or wanted.

I didn’t circle back, yet for some reason this stuck in my head and caused me some consternation so again I hope I am wrong otherwise it says too much about us right now.  The more I think about it the more I hope I am an ass for these thoughts.

People do not usually comment to these posts, but any thoughts are always appreciated.

Democrats cannot get too presumptuous

 

Sure I am an independent, yet sometimes I give advice, well sort of.

First I am writing this in the city of man blog. If you do not know why I am referencing this there is a second blog on the Substack version of this blog that has that answer. Otherwise this is just some thoughts headed into the midterms which are still much further away than the Democrats would like them to be if they really paid attention.

And yes many Democrats are going what?!?!?!?!?!

And yes Trump is falling faster than a lead weight attached to another lead weight and a couple of feathers, but that isn’t the issue right now.

I wrote previously that the Republicans in general need to have a post Trump plan. I haven’t seen that yet, but they got their advice.

The issue will be the economy and the Democrats cannot come out and say Trump screwed up the economy no matter how horrendous or not it is in November. They need to have a rational economic plan that sounds like it is a unified Democratic plan. And it cannot sound socialist or anything too far leftist. Why?

I have said this too many times, yet Democrats really want this to be false. This country is still closer to the center right than the left or barely the center left. Democrats tell me the country is closer to the left. I listen patiently and quietly as they say these arguments. And then I also hear them say they have no idea why people would vote for Trump other than him conning them.

And then they just do not hear, most people care about the economy and the best answer politically is center right ideas. People want to be rich or at least successful. They do not want their lives defined by “a state”. Sure people will accept the government helping people, it has become part of the political dialogue. Yet to say the state should be in charge of our lives, will send people in this country running.

There may be about 20% of this country and they are a loud 20% who do believe in a stronger socialist agenda, yet even many of them would draw the line at a complete state run economy. So anything that sounds close to that or sounds too much reliance on the government will chase away the majority right now even though tired of Trump.

Sure the Democrats can blame Republicans for some of the country’s current travails, but if they chirp away saying all Republicans are bad and then do not offer a rational alternative they may keep people at home. Which leaves open a strong showing by Trump supporters (and right now they are still supporting him) going to the polls and electing who he wants. It is not probable, but very possible if the Democrats chase people away. And the Democrats have a history of doing just that. Don’t believe me then explain to me why Donald Trump won in 2016 and 2024. He didn’t win an outright majority in 2016, but won because the Democrats shut themselves out of the infamous old blue wall or the three to five states from Michigan to Ohio to Pennsylvania.

The Democrats, the party of the working man was snubbed by the working man and has been ever since more or less. Yes the working class should still want the Democrats in power if the Democrat traditional platform existed. It doesn’t anymore. It moved too far left, created a woke culture, which in of itself isn’t the deal breaker, it was the way it was presented to America. Elite Democrats got on their high horse and told everyone how horrible they were if they didn’t go along with what they were told to believe. This caused enough people to run to Trump. If you keep talking down to people, they stop listening much less supporting you. Simple as that, yet Democrats do not want to hear that because it takes away their supposed leadership role.

It is good some Democrats are coming out against the old guard. This needed to be done 15 years ago. Instead Obama caved too much to the vanguard of the party and let Hillary set the party back at least ten years. Well now they can climb out of this morass if they start singing a whole new song. They can still be a liberal party. They just need to realize they aren’t dragging this country to the left at the moment and rethink their messaging to show they can generate sound economic policy without taking away everything. It is more of a thin rope to walk than the Democrats usually attempt. Yet if they want to win the mid terms then in 2028 they better have a very respectful open the big tent kind of mentality and actually have policy that attracts people to that tent.

They start being partisan or elitist and lecturing, they could flub the midterms spectacularly.  Also like mentioned above November is not next month. Much can happen between now and then to give the Republicans some footing to distance from Trump and keep an economic policy that doesn’t scare people.

Now for my real feelings. Both parties still are failing this country. The partisanship anger and hate needs to go. We need new leaders and new parties. Yet for now the Democrats have a chance of keeping the duopoly alive if they make some major changes to their messaging and hopefully their actual policy.

Cheers