I was frequently swayed by the media politically, especially after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. I found myself always angry at something and I wasn’t looking at the person, but the ideas that they held. If a woman was proud of her abortion, I saw her as evil, over a deeply pained woman that needs support. If someone was in a homosexual relationship, I saw them as disgusting individuals who were breaking the bonds of traditional marriage, instead of lost people who needed the love of Christ.
For Lent, I gave up all social media, because I saw how much it was plaguing my empathetic view of other people. It was by far the best decision I’ve ever made. Even without social media, though, it was impossible to avoid the negativity and now that I have social media back (even with more moderate usage), I can feel the hopelessness rising.
As a child, I was frequently taught that we were always supposed to leave something better than the way we found it. This applied to society and such too. For example, I have an early memory of planting a tree for Earth Day with my teacher and other classmates. Many children didn’t see the point of it since we wouldn’t get to see it grow to its maximum, including me. She told us that it is our duty to leave the Earth beautiful for the people that come after us. As a child, this lesson didn’t really stick with me, if I didn’t see the rewards of my efforts, it didn’t matter (I was kind of a selfish kid). Seeing it now though, it all makes sense. What makes me upset though is that this lesson had to have been taught to my parents generation and my grandparents generation, or else how would it come to me? Now, it’s my turn to be an adult and it’s impossible to survive. Gas is $4.30 where I live, everyone says they’re hiring but they never do, rent is at an all time high, the car and housing market are insane. How am I expected to leave this place better if I’m picking up the pieces from the generation that didn’t care?
At this point, I really try to stay out of the negative light of politics, but I can’t help but see our current president and blame him for some of it. Israel receives roughly 3.8 billion tax dollars from us every year, but we still have people sleeping on the streets in our country. Our priorities are in the wrong order. It truly doesn’t feel like American interest is in the president’s mind. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and hope that he does what is right; but, currently, nothing is going right.
My friend Dick Peacock was a rail passenger advocate and also worked on maintaining trails in the mountains of Virginia. At the memorial service for him about nine years ago, the protestant minister, who knew Dick, compared him to someone in the Bible whose work benefited others he would never meet.
A few years later I was up in Vermont, and at Sunday Mass the pastor encouraged everyone to do something to benefit people they would never meet. The parish was having a collection for new hymnals, and with a certain donation you could have someone’s name in the hymnal, in memory of the person. After Mass I told the pastor how his sermon reminded me of my friend Dick Peacock, and now in a church in Vermont there should be a hymnal with his name in it.
I often joke that I have little-to-no empathy (my family on my Mom’s side is mostly German and my family on my Dad’s side is half German, half hill-billy : )
Both the act of abortion and homosexual acts are immoral and gross, but you are absolutely correct. We should will the good of others, even when they choose a path that is not good. We do not want to become so empathetic that we say that these behaviors are good, but we cannot control what choices others make in their own lives. You could outlaw the behavior and still fallen people will do fallen things. And most of the fallen politicians who make the laws have done fallen things. I’m not saying this to justify any fallen behavior. We should still will the good of others, especially when they sin.
This is why I thought (and still think cancel-culture was (and is) bad. Excommunication has always been about correction, not about destroying someone. Cancel-culture is about destroying someone. There seems to be little room for reconciliation in the culture of cancelship and that is my problem with it.
I’m not a fan of Stephen King (especially not his political views), but he did apologize for something he had said on Twitter and I think that was commendable. It was not some fake apology. I think he saw, genuinely, how he had made a mistake. I can’t remember what it was, but I saw some who refused to accept his apology and I thought this was just as bad as whatever he originally said.
This is by design. Both sides need their people outraged, because: 1) it is easy to manipulate someone who is angry or fearful and 2) it gets people to take action (whether that is voting, protesting, donating, or what have you).
There is a difference between being a good steward (what you are talking about) and pushing an ideology of climate change, which is a form of redistribution of wealth tied to emotion. Climate change is a political tool.
I am not a tree-hugger, but I recycle (though often recycling ends up in the landfills without us even knowing). I also don’t like the amount of plastic that our food is wrapped in and even the amount of grocery bags that they use when you do a pick-up (if anyone picks up their groceries). My daughter just got a job as a picker at a grocery store and when I complained to her about this, she said that you do have the option to say “no bags” and actually she would prefer this, because then she can just throw everything into the bins without having to think about which items need to be bagged by themselves (based on store policy) and which can be put in bags with other items. I usually say no bags. I can take multiple trips or bring my own bags from home.
Then you look at what food you have bought. So much is individually wrapped in plastic. Sure it lasts longer. We recently got rid of our plastic containers for left-overs and replaced them with glass ones.
I was against California banning plastic bags. I’m not about legislating the market. If you want to persuade individuals that they should use less plastic that is fine, but I’m not about politicians thinking they know best. There are always trade-offs to anything in life.
We know what causes inflation. Every politician (Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, and anyone else) should read “Basic Economics” by the great Thomas Sowell or “What Has Government Done to Our Money?” by Murray N. Rothbard. The Democrats blame Republicans and the Republicans blame the Democrats, while neither see themselves at fault.
We can blame the generations before us, but what are we doing? We let our children sit on tablets all day long, everything is becoming artificial (our foods, our jobs, and our intelligence). We are enslaving the next generation, because we have allowed ourselves to become enslaved.
When it comes to gas prices, I have a different frame of mind. Gas, until recently, has usually been cheaper than a gallon of milk. And if you and I had to do everything that goes into either a gallon of milk or a gallon of gas, we would gladly pay the $4.30 per gallon! I know I would. Think about all that goes into a gallon of gas. They have to pull it from the ground, put it in a truck, refine it, put it back into a truck and deliver it to a station, then we pump it into our cars. I also would like to point out that if you look on your gas pump, in most States, they have a sticker that tells you what percentage you are paying for a gallon of gas is taxes. You are paying more in taxes than you may be aware when you fill up your car.
I know individuals who gladly pay more for a drink at Starbucks than they do for an entire gallon of milk or gas. My Grandma, who went through the great depression, and forever lived as if she was still living in the great depression, would have lost her mind if she knew what our generation pays for a coffee drink at 7 Brew!
Do not let the fear-porn make you lose what is good, true, and beautiful. Do not lose hope. I have heard too many young people not wanting to have children, because they “don’t want to bring up a child in this world.” That is super sad! My Grandma & Grandpa had eight children during the great depression. Sure, they had to milk their own cow, grow their own food, and had their own gas pump that you had to hand crank, but could buy gas in bulk, so that it was cheaper than going to the station. My Grandma became a nurse and that also helped cut down on health care as well. There was less government regulation back then and she was already pretty much doing what Doctor’s did back then. She could even right prescriptions (though I’m not sure if the Doc had to sign off on them or not, but these are the stories that have been passed on to us over the years).
There is a lot of hope in this world, and you are right, you will have to unplug from the system where you can. And it will make your life harder, but what you will get out of it will be greater than those who are just going along with the push.
Local politics is where it is at. National politics is a joke. And even local politics can be a joke. But, if you begin to view everything through the lens of entertainment, you get less angry and the things that are out of your control begin to matter less.
We have allowed our federal government to violate our Bill of Rights. Government violets our privacy through private deals with tech companies. Politicians interfere with the market by giving subsidies and implementing tariffs. Healthcare is more expensive, because government has gotten involved and there is less competition. There is a reason that the largest companies push for regulation and team up with government, to make it so others cannot compete. They cannot afford to comply.
When government defaults on their debt ($39 Trillion and counting), and implements a global, digital currency (that can be programmable to dictate what you are allowed to use your earning on and what you are prohibited from purchasing, based on your compliance), then the control that they have on your and my life will be irreversible.
But, here is the good news. They make everything consensual, but will use fear, shame, and other forms of wizardry to get you and me to comply. They will sell it to you as a convenience, but what is the trade-off? There are always trade-off’s.
There was a documentary that came out a few years ago called, “The Creepy Line” and it was talking about how technology that we never would have gone along with a decade or two decades ago, are now accepted by most of us. And Google knows this, so they had a philosophy of going right up to “the creepy line” and not crossing it, while knowing that the creepy line changes as a society begins to accept things they never thought they would.
Progressivism is not only evil, but understand that it cannot achieve its goals without in incrementalism [insert frogs in a boiling pot analogy here]. How did we get to transgenderism as being a cultural norm? First they had to get you comfortable with homosexuality. Not only comfortable, but celebrate it. It became the push on every form of entertainment (even true crime) and part of that push was making anyone who made their disordered attraction their identity, either a victim and/or a saint. They had to sanitize the behavior, so that it was more palatable to women and children. And I told my Wife back then (who watched a lot of shows where they were pushing LGB (there was not “T” yet) that the next push would be the trans stuff (and she thought I was crazy, because she was not comfortable with the LGB, and is still not thankfully).
I grew up listening to Gangsta Hip-Hop and Tupac once said in an interview that he makes music for the ladies, because the men who want the ladies will follow whatever they are pushing. And I think a lot of this is true. I look at my CD collection and there was a time in my life where a lot of the music I was into was the same music that some of the girls I liked were into.
When I found out as an adult that Tupac and a lot of these Rappers went to acting school before becoming “gangsta” rappers. How much of my were lies and manufactured persona?
Back to Charlie Kirk. Do you buy the narrative that he was shot by a kid who was dating a trans (furry) with his grandfather’s antique rifle? This should be discussed over on the Conspiracy Theories thread ; ) Because I’m not buying it.