Happy Easter

 

John 20:1-9

 

Well I was feeling really good after Mass last night, yet I woke up this morning with demons bouncing around my head like bingo balls in the basket waiting to be pulled.

Really trying hard to avoid them so let’s hope they go back to where they came from, yet their madness is making me want to say something snarky.

So it bothers me no end when you hear (and this can be someone from the right or left) “you don’t have to read this or listen to this or see this because I did for you”. Just how clueless pseudo elitist can you be? You think your opinion is so much better than mine. Or that I cannot think for myself? Seriously!

Anyway that has to make the top ten worthless things to say on the internet nowadays.

 

Other than that I hope you have a great Easter and are spending it with family, friends and those you love. Maybe just maybe we should shut down for the week for Passover and Easter. People are smart. They could plan ahead. If we started spending more time with those we love instead of raging on social media and corporations gave up some greed trying to squeeze every last dime out of us we do not have, then maybe we could be great again. And add in taking the day(s) off for Thanksgiving, Yom Kippur, Christmas, Hanukkah, Memorial Day, Independence Day and even Labor Day we might just learn to talk to each other again. Just a friendly thought to promote family values instead of corporate greed in our country again.

And I do hope you find Joy in this Easter Season, we definitely need it.

 

He is Risen.

Discussion with a Democrat leading to what my complaints are about the Republican Party

 

Some background, I have been going back and forth with someone on “X” about the Democratic party among other conversations in our modern world. I try to stay productive in our conversations yet since they go back and forth coherence or a long view can drop by the wayside. I am not going to rehash my current viewpoints on the Democratic party and instead focus on some of my opinions on why the Republican party falls short. I invited the person on “X” to read this for their enjoyment. It is an open invitation.

First I am a conservative and regular readers know I say that often and am probably more conservative than I let on. I am also somewhat pragmatic when it comes to either implementing public policy or even writing it. Most Americans even though my “X”  friend disagrees are center to center right and I will get to that in a moment. And quite frankly centrist public policy in many cases is the better public policy in a Republic such as ours. The goal is to protect along with grow the people and country so that the majority benefits and any minority depending on the policy is still protected. Hence centrist policy helps to achieve a balanced approach to running the country.

I won’t get into all my reasons as to why I see the Republican Party failing us and some of this post will be a brief history. I will not spend too much time on the current version of the Republican Party since anyone outside of it sees what the problem is now.

I am starting with the social conservative aspect which may be a problem since most people struggle with social conservative policy including the Republican party. First I am pro life, but do not under any circumstances confuse me with the debacle of pro life policy coming from the Republican party over the last 40 plus years. You cannot legislate or adjudicate morality. It is a disaster to do such. The best case example is Prohibition. Outlawing anything to do with morality only entrenches people’s hearts in the wrong direction. You have to change a person’s heart for them to understand.

Yet I am pro life and that means from conception to natural death. What does that mean? It means for pragmatic purpose if you believe people should have their babies then you need to believe the family needs to be a primary benefit of public policy. This includes good and affordable healthcare, childcare, strong education for our children (equal opportunity applies also here) and taking care of the elderly yet not prolonging people’s lives artificially. And of course you can probably add more.  And this is where Republicans fail us. They spend inordinate amounts of time screaming about women carrying their children to term, but then turn their heads on the rest. I believe we should have our babies. Republicans with this attitude give too much credence to the left saying they just want to control women’s bodies. There is no desire to control women’s bodies in my mind.  I want babies to be born. Life is precious and way to delicate to treat indiscriminately. And then we need to do everything we can to support life and the quality of life until natural death. And this is where centrist public policy comes into play. Some Democrats say we support helping people, I do not disagree in the mentality just in the application they fail. That is another discussion.

Now for some historical points as to why I think the Republicans fail our country. I became an independent shortly after the 1980 presidential election. This is when I saw the Republican party change from a center right political body to an organization that’s primary concern was big business. And yes the Republicans were supporters of big business before 1980, but it wasn’t the biggest driver of most of their policy. And earlier I mentioned most Americans are centrist to center right. They are now and they were then and Richard Nixon understood this well. At the time the term silent majority best exemplified this point. His whole campaign in 1972 revolved around bringing the silent majority to the forefront. And he succeeded beyond belief as he had one of the biggest landslide victories in American political history.

On a side note, my Father was super liberal and actually worked on the McGovern campaign. I considered myself a liberal in my teens. I changed for a variety of reasons in college and yet again a story for another day. Still though I have quite a bit of respect for Jimmy Carter, probably way more than most Republicans. He was anomaly though.

So what happened between 1974 and 1980. Some say the Goldwater wing of the Republican Party came to the forefront since Reagan was originally a Goldwater Republican, but it was more than that. Reagan won in another landslide and the circumstances at the time had more to do with his victory. Reagan then took the party in a new direction and this is where I drop off as being a Republican. A friend of mine in college and I use to argue relentlessly about what it meant to be a conservative. He was a diehard Reagan Republican, while I took a more populist approach.

I saw too much emphasis on big business. I abhorred the tax cuts for the rich (trickle down economics) and saw it as a takeaway from the working and middle class that would hurt them in the long run. And yes I am not speaking in hindsight, they worried me from the get go.  Then along came Grover Norquist with his demand that all Republicans sign onto his tax cut pledges. I felt even at the time the balance of power was being handed to multi national corporations to the detriment of everyone else. And this Republican mindset then was used to justify some pretty horrendous policy and actions by the Republican party ever since.

Add in people like Newt Gingrich and Fox News and the leadership of the Republican party had started their march to the current power grab by Trump. They probably never wanted Trump when they originally started their march. I feel like they would have preferred someone less bombastic and a bit more rational, but they set it up for him and now we, the people, are being served crap on a cracker to quote Penny because they still want their power grab, but can’t put the Trump genie back in the bottle to preserve some rational aspects of this country.

There is MAGA and there are the remnants of Reagan Republicanism both fighting for control of the party, neither though has the best interests of the working and middle class.

So what are the similarities that I say are conservative to the Republican party. This is where I say they give lip service, but have never truly implemented real conservative policy. First I do want less government, but since one of government’s roles is to protect the people we have to accept it as a necessary evil if we want to survive or thrive as a Republic, a people and body politic. And yes that means we do need to spend money on national defense, but also more. The alliances Trump is throwing out with the bath water are important. National defense is never just a country trying to survive by itself. That is self destructive. Alliances, trade, common morality all matter in dealing with other countries. You develop those over time and they are just as important to national defense as your military. Actually you spend less on national defense if you have strong alliances, not that we spend less. We could spend less if we did it right.

And protecting it’s citizens economically is another role of government. And this is where I go off a cliff screaming about how the Republican Party has failed us. Supporting billionaires and multi national companies over the populace is not conservative policy, it is supporting billionaires and multi national companies, nothing more. You can word smith with the verbiage all you want, but it is not conservative policy. If you believe the root word of conservatism is to conserve then conserving the values and livelihood of the populace is what you need to do first. Or how can you say you are a conservative?

I have written massive amounts of public policy ideas over the last fifteen years in this blog so I won’t rehash at this moment.

The goal of this post was to give you an idea of why I feel the Republican Party has failed us and I am just touching on it today.  

I probably need to break down the this versus that aspect of certain policies to give you a better perspective, but that is some weeds to dig through and this post is long enough. Again if you want to cherry pick some of my posts to argue against me fine, but remember there are fifteen years so somewhere down the line I probably already addressed your thoughts.

Well I never use Substack, but adding this so if you are reading this on Substack you will need to go to blogger to find the rest of this blog.

Cheers

Our turn to “flood the zone”

It is Saturday and there are nation wide protests scheduled, yet this will be a news item and nothing more. The Trump administration will tout this as radical left whatevers to try and lessen the news impact for their base.  Sure some will pay attention, but Monday is still going to come.

If you think this will help the Democrats win the mid terms then that might happen but if the market is coming back and people have gotten use to the inflation these tariffs have caused that will be a larger hill to climb in November than people realize right now.

And more importantly we cannot wait a year and a half to fix the damage both economically and alliance wise this disaster Trump created. We need change now. I know I acted a bit optimistic that the economy may settle down some by 2026 , yet that is a warning more than a prediction. Things could also could sour and south fast right now and then 2026 may be too late.

We need to take action now. And again the demonstrations today will make some news, but the only way to change course is to get the Republican Congress to change course.

And this means you need to write your Representative and or Senator now, daily, hourly, start at dawn and write once a hour until dusk. Call them, write them email them just flood their lives with how you feel, what you need and why this is a disaster. It is only until the Republican Congress feels the heat that is stronger than Trump’s bullying them with his base will we get change right now.

Tell them about the tariffs, cuts to programs we need, protect and improve Social Security, Medicare, cutting taxes for the middle and working class not the rich, better education. Tell them you matter. Tell them to call our allies that do not trust us anymore and assure them we are working on it. Flood them with your concerns.

The concern is it will get worse, it may not, but we cannot count on that. We need to take true action now. And that action is telling the Republican Congress how we feel daily. Make them feel the heat that you are about to feel in your daily lives.

You can go to the websites for the House and the Senate

Find Your Representative | house.gov

U.S. Senate: Contacting the Senate

 and search for your Representative and Senator and get their information. I already looked mine up. She has it set up to sign up for her email to contact her, so be it. She will get more emails from me than I from her.

FLOOD THEIR ZONE

If you do not believe in God you probably won’t like this, if you believe in God there is a chance you are going to hate this

 

I have been reading the Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis during Lent. Well I started at the first of Lent and then due to “worldly” events I hadn’t read it for a couple of weeks. I somewhere made a joke about reading it during Lent and I forget the rest. Anyway it was not my intent to read this book specifically during Lent yet it worked out that way.

I haven’t finished it yet, but I was reflecting or self internalizing it, that it is a great book to read if you ever truly want to do a self examination of conscious. And if you are not Catholic basically when we go to Confession or the Sacrament of Reconciliation which the actual confession is only part of the action of Reconciliation that includes the examination of conscious and the repentance, but that is a topic for better educated Catholics than me to discuss.

And we have so much literature and even apps now that help us prepare for the self examination for confession why would you need to read a whole book to prepare for confession. Actually we probably need to read multitudes of books yet again another topic for the more well educated.

The point I was considering was there is so much in the book that we all run across that looking at it from the eyes of the enemy so to speak can open our eyes up even more. And this is a take away from the book as it is, but to use it to prepare for Confession may be a bit much for some, but give it a read and think about it.

We ignore so much of our own lives we forget what is the true perspective. And Screwtape’s arguments about how to drive us away from God can show us what we truly need to do. Or what we should truly be paying attention to daily. And he argues so well about the subtle ways to entice us away from God.

So how does this prepare us for confession? Good question and preparing for confession is something I have been trying to figure out how to do for years. Or even having a “good confession” Exactly what is a good confession.  I use to confess my litany of sins since my last confession yet I felt I wasn’t accomplishing the true goal.

So I changed my approach and did such a good job in changing my approach I really feel like I am not confessing well. I confess better, but is it well. And I truly believe my confessions are better with this new approach which I have been trying for a couple of years now. Yet it makes reading the Screwtape letters stand out so much more. I am going to finish the book and find out what to do next but in the meantime I am still pondering all this internalized madness.

And another thought that has come to mind is that women and men confess differently and not because of the women are from Venus and men are from Mars mentality or by human nature a bit of that, but because of their relationship with God via understanding their relationship to God in the Trinity.

Women truly understand the Church is the bride of the Bridegroom Jesus and can live it, while men struggle with that analogy since the word bride is used and they may feel it is a relationship they do not understand. Of course I am generalizing and people will find examples that shoot generalizing down, but overall I have observed this phenomenon. So this leaves Women confessing to a lover, explaining her frailties her inadequacies and how she can do better and a longing for her lover to forgive her.

Men being “men of action” relate more to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit brings action. So their confessions reflect action, need to overcome the sin, fight it and conquer it.

And both approaches are valid.

Both these examples are just observations in hearing people talk about confession. No one really tells me what they confessed, but over time and knowing many people you hear this type of thinking on how they approach confession.

And going back to the book, C. S. Lewis’ victim of Wormwood and Screwtape being a man Mr. Lewis approaches his reasoning in the man sense. Screwtape addresses the man’s actions or thought processes to turn him, the one relationship matter is his relationship with his Mother and it is very minimal in the book so the relationship of Jesus to a man is not explored versus more of the relationship of one with the man. They talk about their victim’s behaviors and actions and what can be done to change the behavior to lead him away.

I think it is a good book for examination of conscious for a confession even if read just once because you can begin to incorporate how you look at your life through these lenses and even for a woman, yet more men may find it helpful than women.

No matter your Christian denomination it is a good book to read to help you stay on track, yet for people who practice the Sacrament of Reconciliation and are struggling with what is a good confession this may not be the ultimate guide yet it can give some structure to what are you trying to say or as they say get off your chest (conscious).

Cheers.

Latest Podcast is life---tariffs and more

 

Check out why tariffs are more dangerous than you think or have heard.

https://youtu.be/HFKu90meB4w

 

Folks we need more independent voices out there, too much of the world is dictated by people who do not care about you.