Category: History

Posted on

ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM

Today, as I write, the orange man (now blonde) who stole our election on behalf of the Russians held a meeting with Russian diplomats. He allowed only one press organization to cover and release photos. I asked some reasonably well-informed, smart people what press organization they thought it might be. They answered, Fox News.

Of course, their answer was nonsense. Fox News is clueless. It always has been. It’s run by a group of non-native Americans (their countries of origin are China and Australia) who have their own idiosyncratic ideas about what they want the USA to become. Their women parade around on camera half-dressed; recent lawsuits have disclosed that executives use many of them for sex.

They pretend to be patriots and Christians. Of course, anyone who isn’t deaf, dumb, and blind knows they are neither. They aren’t reporters either. Cheerleaders for GOP politicians is a better descriptor.

No, the correct answer is TASS, the Russian news agency, which is an arm of the Russian government. TASS made the press announcements. They released the photographs. And of course, life goes on. No one seems to care. On Tuesday, the FBI director — who led the investigation into ties between our leaders and Russian mafia-oligarchs — was fired.

On Wednesday (today), we learned that it was the president — he remains under investigation — who fired the FBI director; he celebrated by meeting with his Russian friends. They wore black suits, as if to highlight their bonds of power. The president lied, it turns out, about both the process and his reasons — according to members of his own staff, who leaked to major news outlets.

The president’s bodyguard, who delivered the FBI director’s pink slip. Note: on 20 Sept. 2017, the bodyguard left White House service. The Editors

The FBI director learned that he had been dismissed when he saw the announcement on television — the place where most folks get the news they trust most.

Director Comey thought it was a prank. He was preaching to a new class of recruits somewhere in southern California. He read the announcement on the scrolling news ribbon.

Later, the leader of the president’s civilian bodyguards hand-delivered the director’s pink slip. One report claimed that the FBI head hired a commercial aircraft to make his escape home. (ABC News reported that he was able to secure a government plane.)

Unless the Russians go door to door arresting people, no one will ever care — certainly no one in the GOP, it seems. The typical American lives inside a psychotic bubble of evil. Some act like they’ve lost the ability to assess realistic threats to their way of life; to the things they hold dear. They’ve watched too much television, too many movies, too much pornography; they’ve explored too many fake news sites — sites designed by experts to manipulate them into believing absurdities.

The typical American takes too many drugs — some wake up with caffeine and amphetamines; some struggle through stressful work days that last way too long; they sustain themselves by swallowing tranquilizers or derivatives of heroin like oxycodone; some put themselves to sleep with barbiturates or alcohol or both. Some drugs are prescribed; they’re necessary. Others are illegal.

It doesn’t seem to matter. The appetite for drugs is massive; Americans spend billions of dollars each year for drugs they might be better off not taking. They might more realistically assess threats to their freedoms with minds less anesthetized.  Feeling good while living in a high-tech prison bult by billionaires is unnatural and, if anyone thinks about it much, sad and more than a little pathetic.

Howard Hughes (1905-1976) inherited the Hughes Tool Company. It became the nexus of a defense contractor empire worth billions of dollars.

Many Americans would strap syringes to their arms if they believed that no one would notice — as did Howard Hughes, the billionaire industrialist from yesteryear. Some readers may recall that our government confiscated his many businesses to make it easier to build and secure our country’s infamous war machine; the process drove Howard insane; he became dependent on drugs only they could reliably supply to keep him docile and compliant. He lived his last days wearing Kleenex boxes on his feet, because the tissues cushioned his arches and comforted him.

Howard Hughes watched movies all day long — movies he once produced; they often featured his long-lost Hollywood friends. When he felt sad, which was often, he tapped the end of the plungers in the syringes strapped to his arms. Sometimes he cried.

The Mormon FBI agents who baby-sat him allowed him to wallow. They left him to himself for the most part. He never traveled unless they took him. He never fled his gilded prison. His addictions made flight impossible. He might as well have been left to die on a sandbar in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He dropped off the face of the earth. Members of Congress, some of them, worried about him.

The public was asking, Did Howard Hughes die?  He had vanished from view like a ghost. No one ever saw him. He must be dead, some argued. Others knew better. They arranged a phone call with his handlers — to allay the fears of those few who believed that bad actors held him against his will. Powerful congress members wanted to know the truth and share it with the public.

During the call — which was broadcast to the world via speaker-phone before a full congressional gathering — Howard said that he was OK. He was alive. Someone asked, almost as an afterthought, if he was happy. His reply stunned Congress into silence. He answered, No… I’m not happy.

The phone called ended, and that was that. A few years later, Howard died. The coroner said that he found broken needles embedded in the bones of Howard’s arms and legs. He weighed less than ninety pounds.

Escape from Freedom; Amazon.com

Erich Fromm published the book Escape from Freedom in 1941. It was a required read in my high school during the 1960s, which was a long time ago — for some people. It seems like yesterday to me.

Fromm was a German psychoanalyst who argued that true freedom, if it ever came, would scare people so bad that they would embark on an unhealthy search for security; for certainty. The search would be a kind of escape; a frantic fleeing from the painful dissonance that the dissimilarity between people with disparate values can induce.

This discord intensified inside the USA during the past decade or so. Does anyone really want to go through the list of things that Americans hate about each other? Must I mention gay marriage, abortion, liberal politics, civilian access to weapons of war, religion, race, ethnicity, politics, viewing habits, Facebook rants, Twitter smears, and on and on?

People follow; they unfollow; they block; they unblock. They flip channels. They jump from Facebook to Instagram and back again. Nothing works; nothing helps.

Erectile dysfunction, for example, is a subject that has been thrust into everyone’s faces; into the deepest recesses of our subconscious minds. It’s relentless. It’s been discussed with commercial intensity on every media channel. People who watch sports programming can’t escape it.

No one can turn off the voices that are driving us mad, because the people who manipulate the public don’t agree with our points of view; with our sense of life. Do I suffer from erectile dysfunction?  No; Hell no!  I wish I never heard the term.

Do I yearn for a leader; a guide; someone to stand things up; to set things right?  Yes. Of course I do. But it seems like Christ Jesus is not going to visit anytime soon. Maybe a Second Coming is fantasy. Maybe we’ve been stood up. Maybe we need a Führer. Yeah, that’s it.

I said earlier that I borrowed this essay’s title from the book of the same name published in 1941 by the German-born psychoanalyst, Erich Fromm. I don’t know if the book is required reading today or not; perhaps it should be; better books might have replaced it.

I considered a different title; I did. Maybe the Stockholm Syndrome would have been better. It’s about the ten percent of hostages who take on the values of their tormentors. I thought and thought. No; Escape from Freedom was best.

At least for now.

Billy Lee

Note from the Editorial Board: The details of the life of Howard Hughes included in Billy Lee’s essay are based on his memories of events as recorded in press accounts written and televised in real time as they were unfolding. Billy Lee’s memories do not in every case align with current historical accounts, because the history of Howard’s life has been reconstructed and fictionalized by many sources — according to Billy Lee. Billy Lee believes current accounts are revisionist, and in some particulars may in fact be inaccurate. Billy Lee witnessed the congressional interview with Mr. Hughes as it occurred.

Random Reads:

ON AGING

Mom and Dad lost everything as they aged. It wasn't what they expected. They lost their beauty, their common sense, and their minds. ...>>

REASONS

People posturing as patriots hated on a black man who managed to become president of their slave-state. He won a Nobel Prize for it. ... >>

DISARMING CHRISTIANS

I side with tolerant thinkers who are kind to people who are hated because they don't fit stereotypes that certain conservatives favor. ...

THE CHURCH AND THE GAY PEOPLE

The PA wore an Archie watch, a purple wristband, and a Batman necklace. You like cartoons? I asked. I love comics, he gushed, don't you? …

WHAT HILLARY DID

Bill Clinton appointed his wife to help create a healthcare plan to cover every American -- detractors would come to call it HillaryCare. ... >>

ARMAGEDDON

''Minty" Ross Harriet Tubman will not appear on the $20 bill until 2026. Some say it could be later. The cynical say it will never happen. ... >>

RELATED READS

Posted on

JESUS, THE CHRIST

Micah 7: 3-6
Both hands are skilled in doing evil; the ruler demands gifts, the judge accepts bribes, the powerful dictate what they desire — they all conspire together. The best of them is like a brier, the most upright worse than a thorn hedge. The day God visits you has come, the day your watchmen sound the alarm. Now is the time of your confusion.

Jesus, book of Matthew 

For whatever reasons (some mentioned in Bible) Jesus’s parents, their families and friends thought his birth was important. Like most Jewish couples in those days, Mary and Joseph hoped their child would become the Anointed One — the Messiah promised by prophet Isaiah — who would rule ancient Israel and the world with a righteous sword. Despite all hope and plans, things went wrong from the start.

For one thing, Roman authorities decided to conduct a census, which disrupted everyone’s plans, because it required that Jews return to their ancestral towns to be counted. 

The family lived in Nazareth; they were compelled to travel to Bethlehem. Mary was full-term pregnant. Worse, when they arrived, no place was available to birth the baby. They bed in a stable for farm animals. It was a place unfit for babies, at least by modern standards.

For whatever reason — gossip, religion fever, displaced people hysteria, hatred of Rome, whatever — more than a few people believed that this particular birth might have political upside. Roman spies became aware, and Governor Herod decided to nip mania in the bud. He ordered an infanticide — agents assassinated every male under age two.

The story is that wealthy people found Joseph and Mary before Herod; they provided resources to flee to Egypt. Jesus would not see Nazareth until he turned eight. 

Scholars agree that Egypt was the birthplace of Judaism.  Moses (of Exodus) and Joseph (coat of many colors) were historically prominent; the details of their lives are the tapestry through which Torah was written.

For those who don’t know, Joseph enabled Jews to come to Egypt in ancient times, mainly to avoid famine in Israel. They immigrated around 1520 BCE and eventually became slaves. About 200 years after, in 1311 BCE, Moses led freed Jewish slaves out of Egypt.

When Jesus arrived almost a millennium and a half later, Egypt had evolved to become a Roman sanctuary city for a sizable Jewish population. And it had become safe harbor for legendary libraries and intellectuals.

History doesn’t say whether Jesus lived in cosmopolitan Alexandria or some other city, or what his life was like in Egypt, but after he returned to Israel, he knew things. He was skilled with his hands like his father Joseph, who according to tradition was a carpenter; most scholars believe he was a builder, yes, but most likely a stone mason.

Jesus learned to read and write Hebrew and probably hieroglyphics (who knows?) and maybe more. He may have been a child prodigy. Things he said caught the attention of rabbis in Israel before he reached age of bar mitzvah. 

At age twelve, his parents found him studying secretly at Temple in Jerusalem. Temple leaders studied him; he came to them from Egypt, after all. They knew the Bible prophesy, Out of Egypt I have called my son — reference to Messiah. Rabbis may have worked with Jesus for some time believing he could be the promised one. 

Bible records claim that Jesus had a way about him that set him apart as he matured. According to one writer, people liked it.  Luke wrote in his little book that …Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. 

Some assumed that Jesus might be the promised military leader who would lead Jews to throw Romans out of the Holy Land. In the end, Jesus did more, but not the way people thought.

His life mirrored ancient Scripture in every way imaginable. Scholars know that, now.  Christian colleges offer courses to cover hundreds of passages which foreshadow in detail Jesus’s life and meaning.

But back then — in year zero — no one in Israel understood prophetic texts. It wasn’t clear to anyone that Messiah would not be a military general. Truth was different — more satisfying for some than anyone imagined.

Billy Lee 

Comment from Editors:
As is Billy Lee’s custom, he sometimes collects sayings by famous people and makes essays from them. He did for William Shakespeare, Miguel Angel Asturias, and Blaise Pascal; he even did it for himself in two collections of his own tweets first published on Twitter.

In this essay Billy Lee collected many (not all) sayings of Jesus as remembered by four followers who wrote tracts moderns call Gospels. In these little books, Jesus tells stories known as parables. They make big portions of the Gospels.

Billy Lee decided not to include parables in his collection, because they not only take a lot of space, but their meanings can also be difficult for the uninitiated to figure out. It takes effort to work them through. *  

For purposes of this essay Billy Lee has chosen to focus on easier to understand admonitions and warnings — uncut, unfiltered, uncensored; no hidden meanings; everything open in plain sight for any serious person to read and wonder, because it is these simple things that seem to border on the miraculous; they are words that have compelled and comforted believers for centuries.

Words of Jesus are thought to have broken some of the cruelest people who ever lived; Jesus has dropped more than a few hardened haters to their knees, many in tears, not only in great novels but in life. 

Through his words, Jesus assures poor and ruined people that life will be set right. Humanity will be rescued by love — even as justice rolls down from mountain-tops like a mighty river.

History and experience tell those who have eyes to see and ears to hear that it’s true. Jesus is the way. He is light for all who live. 

from Matthew’s Tract

It is written: People will not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Stop doing bad things, for the kingdom of heaven is nearby.

…follow me, and I will send you forth to fish for people.

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

…until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

…unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

 It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

 All you need to say is simply yes or no; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

…love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your father in heaven.

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins.

You cannot serve both God and money.

So do not worry, saying, What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or What shall we wear? For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged…

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

…small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them.

Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven.

I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. 

Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.

…learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.

I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard…

…when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say,  for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. 

Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.

…the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it.

For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.

…you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.

Come to me, all you who are weary and overly burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

If you had known what these words mean, I desire mercy, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent.

Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined…

Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven…

 …whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.

…the deceitfulness of wealth chokes the word, making it unfruitful.

The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When someone finds it, they hide it again, and then in their joy sell all they have and buy that field. 

…the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away

…every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.

What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?  Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

…if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, Move from here to there, and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. 

 …whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

 …your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.

If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.  But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan…

For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.

Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?

 …forgive your brother or sister from your heart.

If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.

...it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.

…with God all things are possible.

But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.

…whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,  and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. 

If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. 

…prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.

…the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. 

…many are invited, but few are chosen.

At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead — have you not read what God said to you,  I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. ? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

The greatest among you will be your servant.  For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.

…you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

…on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog…

…you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.  At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other,  and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

…the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,  I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.

My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done…

…all who draw the sword will die by the sword.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? 

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Excerpts collected and edited by Billy Lee

from Mark’s Tract

…whoever is not against us is for us…

No one is good — except God alone.

Excerpts collected and edited by Billy Lee.

Due to its unusual presentation, we are recommending that the full Gospel of MARK be read in one session. Interested readers can click the link to access content. The tract is 11,300 words, which are gathered into 16 chapters. A typical reader will need about one hour. The Editorial Board

from Luke’s Tract

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. 

…no prophet is accepted in his hometown…

I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent. 

Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you…

…whoever has been forgiven little loves little.

…for whoever is not against you is for you.

Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.

…rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

…everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. 

Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

…you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them…

Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge.

Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.

This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself? This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.

Do not be afraid, little flock, for your father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. 

Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning…

From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

I have come to bring fire on the earth… Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.

…unless you change your evil ways, you too will all perish…

What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to?  It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches.

Make every effort to enter through the narrow door…

…those who humble themselves will be exalted.

…when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.

…those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.

…remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.

If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.

Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying, I am sorry; I will change, you must forgive them.

The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, Here it is, or There it is, because the kingdom of God is within you. 

…when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?

What is impossible with man is possible with God.

…the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

…if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.

The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone…

The people of this age marry and are given in marriage.  But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.

I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

…pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.

Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. 

…today you will be with me in paradise.

Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

Excerpts collected and edited by Billy Lee 

from John’s Tract

…no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.

…no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, You must be born again. The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. 

…whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

…a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth…

…just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. 

…whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.

…as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself…

You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. You study  the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me… 

…the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

…my father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

…unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.  For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.

…the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you — they are full of the Spirit and life.

…where I am, you cannot come.

Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

…you have no idea where I come from or where I am going…

I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come.

…you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

…you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.  

…whoever obeys my word will never see death.

…before Abraham was born, I am.

I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.

I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. 

I lay down my life — only to take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.

I am God’s Son…

I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.

…you will see the glory of God…

…unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.  

The one who looks at me is seeing the one who sent me.

I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. 

Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.

As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.

I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

I am the way and the truth and the life.

I am in the Father and the Father is in me…

Because I live, you also will live. Someday you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 

…the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

…apart from me you can do nothing.

Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no person than this: to lay down their life for their friends.  

You did not choose me, but I chose you…

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.

If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.

They hated me without reason.

…the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.

I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.

I came from God. 

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart. I have overcome the world.

Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.  

…your word is truth.

Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

My kingdom is not of this world.

…my kingdom is from another place.

…the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth hears my voice.

I am thirsty.

It is accomplished.

Excerpts collected and edited by Billy Lee

Postscript

Isaiah 6: 8-10

”Woe to me!” I cried. ”I am ruined! For I am a man whose lips speak all manner of evil, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

Then an angel of high rank flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.  With it he touched my mouth and said, ”See, this hot coal has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin is set right.”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying: Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?

And I said: Here am I.  Send me!

He said:  Go and tell this people: Be ever hearing but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.

* Jesus quoted Isaiah 6 in Matthew 13 to explain why he taught certain groups of people using allegories (or parables). Jesus told his disciples:  …knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.

Billy Lee

Random Reads:

BEING HATED

People hated on me my whole life but never more than now when I need their love so bad. If they knew how they weaken me they'd hate me more. ...>>

FLYING BLIND

Everyone flies blind except the pilot. He's trained. He knows what to do. With any luck at all, the pilot will land the plane -- safely. ...>>

BAD THINGS

Dad was fearless to the end of his 91 years. He once ate a half pound of spoiled cheese, because it was a gift. .... >>

12 ASSERTIONS

If humans are unable to ever know why photons exist and behave as they appear to do, then who can? Who does understand? ...>>

CIVILIZATION AND INEQUALITY

If the United States reduced the wealth of the 100,000 wealthiest Americans what could it do with the money? ...

WHERE IS JOE?

Joe Biden walks in the gap between civilization and Armageddon. He's the last man standing able to save humanity from the slavery that follows the victory of totalitarianism. ...>>

RELATED READS

Posted on

RESURRECTION

So much to say; so little time. And dangerous. Imagine. When my essay is done, God will know for sure, should I get it wrong. What are the chances my essay will get it exactly right? Not good.

Jesus, before he died, said he had much more to share, but the ancient people he messaged couldn’t handle it. We know it’s true. Two thousand years ago people were more ignorant and intolerant than even today. The Holy Spirit, Jesus said, would lead modern people into all truth, but it would be done gently, gracefully, and in God’s good time. 

Jesus said that he came to save the world, not judge it; the last thing he said before crucifixion took him was this: It is accomplished. 

Greek: τετελεστα  (te-TEL-es-ta)

What was accomplished?

I’m not a theologian; I’m a pontificator. It means I have no credentials. Readers will not find a single group of humans anywhere on Earth who will vouch for me.

I know this: people are scared to die. Most feel like Otis Redding, who released his version of the soul classic A Change is Gonna Come during Christmas season 1964:

It’s been too hard living, oh my
And I’m afraid to die.
I don’t know what’s up there
Beyond the clouds.

Jesus sweat blood; he begged God to find another way. It wasn’t to be.

My dear wife, a geriatric nurse, gave care to hundreds of people who died as she comforted them. I’ve watched three people die — my mom and dad and my wife’s dad. Bevy Mae will disagree, but the word that describes death for me is horror.

Death has a finality to it that seems to rob life of all meaning. My dad was a heroic figure. His life as a Navy pilot was an adventure. People loved him. In death, it counted for nothing. Death robbed his life of context. That’s how I experienced it. Total loss. No redeeming virtues; no comfort.

My mother’s death was worse. Her mouth dropped open. When I leaned over to kiss her goodbye, I smelled death. It ruined memory. For a few moments I hated God.

Beverly’s dad collapsed in his downstairs bathroom. We slept upstairs during a visit. He fell on the medical-alert pendant he wore around his neck. It pierced his chest; he bled out before we reached him. My wife spent hours cleaning up her father’s blood. Some of it seeped into the floor boards beyond her reach.

When I looked into the faces of the dead, one thing was sure. People, once they’re gone, don’t come back. Death is final.

Jesus died in a storm during an earthquake. The violence and damage done terrified people. 

One of the military commanders on scene insisted that Jesus must be the “Son of God”, because the geologic violence that occurred during the execution proved it. 

To tamp down hysteria, Pontius Pilate, the governor, blocked access to the grave with a huge rock — which he ordered sealed — and he posted a guard to protect against gawkers and grave robbers. During an inspection a few days later, the tomb was found empty. Linen burial-strips lay in a pile.

Jesus eluded capture but was able to speak to hundreds of people, including members of his family. His brother, James, wrote a short, adulatory book about him, which was included in the canon of the New Testament many years later. In it he cautioned people to not doubt — something he did during his brother’s life. Until the resurrection, he didn’t know what to think about his controversial sibling.

Pastors sometimes say that people who don’t believe in the resurrection are not really Christians. The Bible says that all who call on the name of the LORD will be saved, so what difference does it make?

Jesus said it is accomplished before his resurrection took place — days before. It seems  impossible for a modern person to believe that a dead person is able to be brought back to life by any process anyone can imagine.

What amazes me is that folks don’t believe the simple things Jesus said, which are counter-intuitive, perhaps, but easily confirmed by anyone who chooses to live life outside their comfort zone.

Jesus said that rich people don’t go to heaven, for example, unless God arranges a miraculous intervention. One might think Christians would be shedding their money like dead skin. Yet some pastors preach that prosperity and wealth are an indicator of God’s favor for anyone who makes a confession of faith.  

A pastor’s wife once told me she had never visited anyone in prison. Jesus advised people to visit not only prisoners, but the sick and the shunned, the poor and disabled — even the lowest rung of people in society — to show God’s love by sharing their lives; by being with those who are beat down by times of trouble. Who does this?

I’ve met Christians who home-school their kids and live in gated, sometimes all-white neighborhoods where they wall themselves off like nuns in a convent; they do mission trips, yes — highly organized and scheduled; usually once each year for a week to ten days. It doesn’t seem to be either right or enough, at least to me.

Christ said that men who look at women with lust are adulterers; the punishment for some forms of adultery during Bible times was death.

It’s not unusual to hear Christian men complain that they are trapped in a web of pornography, which some feel helpless to resist. How can anyone obey Jesus and honor his suffering, they reason, while they themselves spend hours each day committing adultery online, or however they manage it?

I can go on. The list is endless. Christians want to be good, but they can’t.

No one avoids guilt; no one sidesteps shame. People seem to contort their minds to think pretty much whatever they want. The easy stuff they ignore, when it’s inconvenient. The difficult stuff — like grounding their faith in the resurrection of Christ Jesus — they take on without effort, because it doesn’t involve suffering to tell other “believers” that they believe it too. Suffering is what everyone is trying to avoid.

Jesus bled-out on a cross; I won’t have to, they imagine. But Jesus said that unless we eat his flesh and drink his blood, we have no life in us. What did he mean by it?

The Bible says most of his followers deserted him after he said it. But Matthew — maybe the most prominent disciple; the New Testament begins with his tract — quoted Jesus to say that followers would find in Him rest for their souls.

My yoke is easy and my burden is light, Jesus said.  

Folks whose heads are above water — who once suffocated in the quicksand of sin and were rescued — know exactly what Jesus meant. To live, they sometimes find themselves suffering to do what’s right. It’s inconvenient, but it leads to a better way of being. Poverty, not wealth, is a sign of the cross. It is a seal that binds us to Christ and his destiny.

Suffering along side of Christ, even in the midst of our own self-inflicted carnage, is a path that can lead to resurrection; to a life that lasts; to a life that has meaning. Suffering to help set the world right — to set ourselves right — can be a reminder of God’s promise to rescue us; to place us into a life that will last; into a place Jesus called Paradise. 

Folks who hold fast to the cross of Jesus; who drink His blood; who share His agony are never alone. Jesus said he came to save his own from the ruin that comes from dying evil. It’s a promise He doesn’t break. All other paths lead not only to suffering, but separation from God.

Loving people; aligning our aspirations with Christ’s destiny — which is to love and rescue others; to stand ready to die to ourselves, should it ever become necessary — are among the things Jesus might have meant when he said: 

I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to God except through me.

Billy Lee

There’s a time I would go to my brother, oh my.
I asked my brother, ”Will you help me please?”, oh my oh my.
He turned me down and then I ask my dear mother, oh.
I said ”Mother!”
I said ”Mother! I’m down on my knees.”
            ————————
So tired, so tired of standing by myself
And standing up alone.
A change has gotta come.
 
(excerpts by Otis Redding)
 
 .

Random Reads:

MASS STOCKHOLM

Stockholm Syndrome is at the core of Trump’s power. Trump is right that he can kill, and his supporters will stand with him. …>>

ANTARCTICA

Antarctica is weirder and scarier than people think. Something's happening there... what it is ain't exactly clear. ...

BILLIONAIRE BRAWL 2020

Does Kamala Harris have the wisdom, maturity, pedigree, and experience to be president?  These questions have to be asked and answered. ...>>

12 ASSERTIONS

If humans are unable to ever know why photons exist and behave as they appear to do, then who can? Who does understand? ...>>

WARRIOR

In his world, right made might. On doing good, Civilization stood. ...>>

CONSCIOUS LIFE

What could be more unlikely than something dead--like a singularity that goes bang--bringing forth something not only alive but conscious. ...>>

RELATED READS

Posted on

NIGHTMARE

I lived as a teenager and young adult during the 1960s in an America where abortion was illegal in every state. At least 10% of women and girls got abortions anyway, maybe more.

Who knows? The technology of abortion is not complicated; people performed them for pregnant girls and women, usually for small fees.
 
Birth control was something new. Girls and young women, most of them, did not yet understand how it all worked. They suffered shame and ignorance. Many got “into trouble” who never imagined it could happen to them — learning about their pregnancies, some of them, long after their boyfriends had moved on.

In junior high — it was 1961 — I was thirteen. In those days, Thursday was Queers Day. Anyone who wore green was considered queer and could be harassed — no mercy.

God help the wearer of green on Queers Day. I had no idea what being queer meant. I knew it was bad. Queer folk went to prison, some of them. They couldn’t get security clearances in the military, not in the Navy, anyway.

Dad told me, so I knew it was true. 

Blacks couldn’t vote until 1964. I was 16. Until the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, businesses like hotels, drugstores, theaters, and realtors could choose to not sell their products to anyone they hated — usually Negroes. 
 
Yes, a few companies sold to black people but not many. After Martin was murdered, 125 cities erupted into racial violence. Some say more. Congress, fearing the unraveling of America, passed the Fair Housing Act and other legislation to make racial discrimination by business owners illegal.
 
I never saw a black face on television until 1965. I was 17. Black musicians and singers entertained on the radio and in night clubs in most large cities. On the radio it was not possible to know always if the singer was black.

Otis Redding released a hit song during Christmas of 1964. I loved it. When Otis died in 1967, I did not know what he looked like. I’d never seen a picture of one of the most popular American singers of all time.
 
When I graduated from college, one thing I did know for sure was what all the many brands of cigarettes looked like. I knew Marlboro tastes good like a cigarette should. 

The jingle burned my brain. I will never be rid of it. TV forced hundreds-of-millions in the USA and around the world to watch countless thousands of cigarette commercials. 

Viewers back then couldn’t pause or mute programs. Remotes didn’t exist.

Of course, I smoked. Who can resist sophisticated advertising? 

I can’t.

Back in the day, the one and only control anyone had over what they watched was the on-off switch. The “off” switch meant choosing to be lonely, sometimes.  


On television news, I watched the USA fight genocidal war in Vietnam. I signed up to serve as an infantry officer, no less. I learned that war is bad — much worse than I imagined.

I protested, and the army stripped me of my pending commission. I was arrested at an antiwar demonstration and spent hours in jail before some good lawyers set me free.
 
Historians have argued that sometime during 1952 (I was four) the USA dropped anthrax munitions on Chinese troops stationed in northern Korea. The act of bioterrorism was justified by the idea that the alternative was nuclear weapons, which everyone believed involved more risk.

When doing research, I learned that everyone in the world seemed to know about the anthrax attack except Americans.

In 1976, a “rogue” CIA employee blew up a commercial airplane carrying, among other folks, the Cuban Olympic fencing team. The bombing was the world’s first act of aviation terrorism — a form of warfare our enemies would one day turn against us.

A “rogue” CIA asset named Oswald assassinated President Kennedy in 1963. I was in high school. Back in the day, rogue actors seemed to show up from time to time in places where unusually catastrophic events erupted. 

Wikipedia reports: According to a 1963 FBI memo that was released to the public in 2008, [former president] Ford was in contact with the FBI throughout his time on the Warren Commission and relayed information to the deputy director, Cartha DeLoach, about the panel’s activities.

I lived in America under President Nixon, the closest thing to a Nazi ever elected to the White House.  I was 26 when Congress started the impeachment process against him, but Nixon chose to resign in exchange for a pardon by his vice-president turned president, Gerald Ford.

During high school, I lived in Virginia, where white people went “coon” hunting to find and execute random black people.

I lived a half mile from the headquarters of the American Nazi Party, which was led by a retired Navy Commander.

 Can things get worse?

Of course.

Government leaders lie. Many are hypocrites. It’s often not possible to know what’s true. A lot of people who wear suits and ties are haters and power-trippers.

It’s true.

 

We are a slave state.

Slavery was 100 years old in America when our nation established itself under a constitution in 1776 — it was 150 years old if indentured servants — who were white and European — are included. Two-thirds of whites came to America as slaves. True, they weren’t in chains, and their “contracts” expired after seven years.
 
Slavery is the fertile soil out of which the thorn bush of capitalism spread its vile branches of greed and exclusion. The institution of bondage makes getting rich a lot easier for those who own slaves.
 
Who doesn’t love the roses of capitalism? But its spines can grow long enough to wound and kill the unwary. Unlimited incomes and estate sizes turn capitalism into a predatory exercise; without limits people get hurt; democracy is devalued; economies stall; recession and depression follow.
 
The disadvantaged poor are as often as not sent to war by the rich and powerful to further maximize their enormous advantages. Threatening war to take the oil of Iraq is an example — an idea recently floated by President Trump.

Since the beginning of empires, every thinking person has known that greed, unchecked and unrestrained, destroys civilizations. The Bible says that the love of money is the root of every kind of evil.

It’s true.

Almost everyone in the world today lives under authoritarian governments run by men who don’t give a damn about freedom. It’s always been this way.

Even in an America with its Statue of Liberty, its Bill of Rights, its wide-open spaces and fast cars, most people find themselves trapped in jobs they hate working for rich folks who can disrupt and sometimes ruin their lives with two words: You’re fired.

To put things into perspective: unless our new president decides to arrest and execute dissenters, or drops nuclear bombs, we will get through what seems to some like a living nightmare. It is not, not really, not yet.
 
We’ve been down this nasty road before. It leads to upheaval, yes, but if my generation survived and prevailed, then our kids and grandkids have a chance to prevail as well.
 
My advice is to be smart; dignity and love demand that each person resist evil as best they can. Unfortunately, my experience is that the brave who resist lose every battle. 

Who can close their eyes? The USA targeted and killed resisters in both Asia and the United States during the Vietnam debacle, to cite one example out of many.   
 
War resisters lost every fight; every argument; every skirmish; every battle. 

People still ridicule baby boomers who said no to war. Ads on TV make claim that many boomers suffer from hepatitis C.  Imagine — the generation that said no to war is a leper colony according to pharma pigs, who always push imaginary cures. 
 
Like everything else billionaires tell us, it’s bullshit. I don’t know a single person from my generation who has hepatitis C. Yes, some boomers have hepatitis C; that much has to be true; it’s simple statistics; and, yes, some voters cheated during our recent presidential election. There are always some, always on both sides, it turns out. 

Anything is possible.

Everything is possible.

 

Powerful people can paint the people they despise in any colors they want.

Crooked Hillary.

Lying Ted.

Sleepy Joe. 
 
Slander is not new. The 9th Commandment forbids it. No one cares. People increase their power by violating it. It’s the way power rolls.

It always will be.
 
It’s why Jesus said that unless graced by a miracle by God, the wealthy have as much chance of getting into heaven as a camel squeezing through the eye of a needle.
 
Despite the harm that billionaires do, they can’t change the reality that Martin Luther King Jr. described during his short life of suffering for the cause of freedom and equality:

The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

They murdered Dr. King when he was 39. He didn’t live long, but he changed the course of civilization on Earth for as long as civilization lasts. 

We, every one of us, can share Martin’s hope: non-violent resistance is not futile. Not yet. Not ever. It only seems futile when we are tired and discouraged.

Some have died to make folks free.

 It’s not fair, it’s not right, but it’s true.

We have heroes. 

Billy Lee

Random Reads:

BEING HATED

People hated on me my whole life but never more than now when I need their love so bad. If they knew how they weaken me they'd hate me more. ...>>

FINDING LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

12 space agencies are looking for alien life inside the solar system. With so many moons and planets, the hope is that one will harbor life. ...>>

BLAISE PASCAL: THOUGHTS

Blaise Pascal was a man who suffered terribly his entire life until he died at age 39 from a metastasized stomach cancer. ...

REASONS

People posturing as patriots hated on a black man who managed to become president of their slave-state. He won a Nobel Prize for it. ... >>

WHAT I LEARNED

Israeli citizens complain of lost freedom. Some say judiciary is toothless in face of autocracy---worse than America, they claim....>>

CAPITALISM AND INCOME INEQUALITY

Capitalism differs little from Slavery until the legal environment secures certain rights to labor. USA crafted a Bill of Rights. ...

RELATED READS

Posted on

FLYING BLIND

It’s possible to fly blind and survive. It’s possible to fly a twin-engine Beechcraft through a wicked storm without instruments; without communication; find the airfield, locate an empty runway, and land safely.

It’s possible to feel the air disappear beneath your wings and freefall — even tumble — thousands of feet, time after time, dozens of times, recover the aircraft, and keep on flying.

It’s possible for clouds to be impenetrable, lightning to be relentless and unceasing, rain to be thick as waterfalls — with a vomiting passenger in the seat next to you — and keep your wits, keep your senses, keep your fear in check, keep your focus, and keep flying.

Anything is possible during a storm when all is lost except training and skills and the belief that you really are the best pilot in the Navy — when you know deep in your gut that this storm, which forecasters managed to miss, is not how it’s going to end for you or the high-ranking government official sitting in the seat next who hates to fly; who hitched a ride, who chose you, because he trusted you to get him to his meeting with the president, or whoever it was, in one piece.

It’s not possible to stay dry however. During this flight my dad, the pilot, sweat through his clothes. When I met him after his ten minute drive home from the airfield, I asked him, how did you get so wet?  His hair and face looked like he just stepped out of the shower. His flight-suit was dark with sweat; water dripped from his cuffs; even his shoes squeaked from pooling sweat around his feet.

I had a rough flight, he said. The worst flight of my life. I got overheated. Never sweat like this, ever. I’m ok. We made it. No problems.

Dad left it at that. But a week later, his passenger came to our house for dinner. He told the whole story. He said Dad saved his life during that flight. No one in the Navy was a better pilot, he insisted, and I believed him.  

It was 1964; I was a high school sophomore living at home in Arlington, Virginia near the nation’s capitol. It was the year when Barry Goldwater, the darling of the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, ran for president. He lost everywhere except Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Arizona — his home state. (Today — a lifetime later — lunatics are mainstream; go figure.)

In 1964, the American Nazi Party — led by retired Navy Commander Lincoln Rockwell — owned a field next to our neighborhood where it maintained a barracks and its national headquarters.

Rockwell’s few dozen men were heavily armed; we heard they used German Shepherds to keep gawkers away, but we never saw any when me and my friends snuck onto the property to fire bottle rockets at the barracks. One time a trooper in black boots and tee-shirt walked up on us and clicked the bolt on his rifle. We ran like hell to get away. He didn’t squeeze the trigger. We didn’t trespass again, either.

One time, we visited the Nazi offices and barracks on a dare. A guard let us into the headquarters. I was amazed at how much red color there was. The carpeting on the floors, the walls — even the carpeting on the ceilings — all was red.

It was quiet inside, like a church; even tranquil. One of the men invited us to take some pamphlets from a table in the foyer. We took some, but I don’t remember reading anything but a few of the headings. The content — what little I scanned — seemed ignorant. The Nazis despised Jews and Negroes. What else was new?

A few years later someone on a roof at a strip mall near our house fired a shot at Rockwell. He was leaving the laundromat where he washed his clothes, of all things.

I always bought pop-sickles and candy a few doors down at the Seven-Eleven. It didn’t seem particularly remarkable to learn in 1967 as I started my sophomore year at college that someone assassinated the Nazi commander a mere half-mile from my house.

But to get back to my essay…

Dad crashed a couple of planes during his time in the Navy; it seemed like every pilot screwed up sometime in those early days during World War II and a little after. 

During one accident Dad and another pilot collided over a town in Florida. Dad had to bail; he was flying low; his parachute opened immediately; he swung three times as he hung suspended beneath; he hit the ground hard. Except for bruises, he was fine. The other pilot tumbled into the ground and was killed.

The Navy court-martialed my dad, which came as a shock; an official inquiry followed; it lasted a few months, and, in the end, Dad had to take the stand and testify; he was terrified the whole time, my grandfather told me.

Dad confirmed it; he was never more scared before or after, he confessed many years later. The Navy cleared Dad of wrong-doing; he lived to fly another day — with a clean record — which is all he wanted to do anyway since as a boy he first saw an airplane fly over his farm.

Flying was freedom. It was so clear. He hated working in the mud and manure of a farm; if he could fly, he could escape — like the pilots who flew over his farm, he would be free. He would find a way.

It took planning and luck, but he made it. He took a train from Detroit to Chicago; he managed to sign up for the Navy flight program five minutes before the deadline. The rest is history.

Dad rose rapidly in the ranks of both Naval Aviation and Navy intelligence; more specifically the National Security Agency (NSA), which in those days tracked ships, mostly. Early on, the Navy taught him to speak Russian; much later, they taught him French, but it was too late. He never became fluent.

People who know how I write, must by now realize that this essay is going somewhere amazing; somewhere they don’t expect. Have patience. Keep reading.

Dad was a leader with strong views about what made for good leadership. He believed in taking care of his men; he believed in meting out justice to misbehaving officers and enlisted men in the same way — no favoritism to officers.

Military justice doesn’t work the same way as civilian justice. People who have served in the Navy know that commanders can throw their people in the “brig” for any reason — or no reason.

Commanders have absolute power, which they must have if they are to lead an effective fighting force that obeys orders under combat duress and the threat of death. Dad punished officers in the same way he disciplined the men.

(Editor’s note: women didn’t serve in fighting units until the 1990s.)

But Dad had another belief about power that people who have never wielded it don’t understand. To lead disparate and rebellious people — which large groups of humans tend to be — it is essential to keep them guessing; to keep them off guard; to keep them off-balance; and most important, to keep them uninformed. Never tell subordinates anything they don’t have an absolute need to know. Make everyone unsure of what they think they know and what they think they don’t know.

How does this work in practice? Why is it effective?

My uncle Dean told me a story about a time when Dad took him to visit the anti-submarine, jet-helicopter squadron he commanded in Key West, Florida. It was dark — about nine o’clock at night (2100 hours they say in the Navy). 

Dad parked his car outside the guard shack; he and Dean got out and walked past the guard. The guard motioned them through with a salute and a smile.

According to my uncle, Dad whirled around and stormed the guard. He stood toe to toe, in his face, and dressed him down. You will demand identification from anyone who passes this point, sailor!  He pointed at my uncle. This man, here, he might be a spy. You put the security of the most important squadron of fighters on this island at risk. Report to my office tomorrow morning — 1000 hours.

Yes sir! the guard said.

Dad took Uncle Dean into the hangar and showed him anti-submarine jet-helicopters. He took him aboard his favorite and showed him the complicated arrays of instruments and armaments then available to the armed forces.

Gages and dials, buttons and levers, advanced screens and switches covered the cockpit ceiling, its floor and doors and front panels. Belts and canisters and other incomprehensible items filled every available nook and cranny. There was no empty space, anywhere.

Dean got quite a show, I can tell you, because Dad took me on the same tour. My thought after seeing how the Navy fights was, how does anyone learn all this complicated stuff, let alone fly these monstrous beasts, which slay the Russian sub-dragons?

Anyway, the tour ended after ten or fifteen minutes, and the two men left the hangar to return to the car and begin the drive home. We lived on the base less than two miles from the squadron. Dad and Dean walked along laughing about something, when the guard stopped them. May I see your identification, gentlemen? he said calmly.

Once again, Dad spun on his heels. What? Are you blind? Am I not the commander of this squadron? Do you not see me every day? You checked Dean, here, ten minutes ago. He is a guest. Leave us alone and show respect. Return to post.

Sir… yes sir!  the guard shouted.

Later, Dean asked dad. You ordered this sailor to always ask for ID. Later, when he did exactly as you asked, you humiliated him. Why?

When you’re in charge, Dad said, the men have to know. You keep them guessing. You keep them off-balance. You force them to determine in their own minds what they believe you expect from them. Everything works better that way.

Yeah, it’s weird. But I think he might have understood something important. I’ve known other powerful men who operate the same way. I’ve worked for some.

Our newly elected president seems to share this view of power. Disinformation seems to be his modus operandi.

Another sacrosanct principle of leadership is not sharing information with “the help.” No one will ever see the tax returns, balance sheets, income statements, or health records of the newly elected president.

It’s called flying blind. Everyone flies blind except the pilot. He’s trained. He knows what to do. The world might seem to be falling apart all around. But with any luck at all, the pilot will land the plane — safely.

There is one thing that my dad once did that has been erased from history by disinformation. In the must-read book by Oliver Stone, The Untold History of the United States, Mr. Stone tells a story about an incident during the Cuban missile crisis that almost led to nuclear war. Here is an excerpt:

On October 27 [1962] an incident occurred that Schlesinger accurately described as ”not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. It was the most dangerous moment in human history.” A navy group led by the carrier USS Randolph began dropping depth charges near a Soviet B-59 submarine sent to protect the other Soviet ships approaching Cuba. Those inside the U.S. destroyers were unaware that the Soviet sub was carrying nuclear weapons. Soviet signals officer Vadim Orlov described the scene: ”The depth charges [sic] exploded right next to the hull.”

Get the book to read a harrowing account of the hours of hell Russian men inside the sub endured. Some officers passed out. The bottom line is this: the submarine’s commanding officer gave an order to launch a nuclear missile, but the communist political officer on board, Vasili Arkhipov, overruled him.  According to Oliver Stone, Arkhipov refused to launch, single handedly preventing nuclear war.

I can tell readers that the only weapons of war we had in Key West capable of chasing nuclear subs and dropping depth charges with the accuracy described in the book was Sikorsky anti-submarine jet-helicopters, which were under the command of my dad. They used new communication technologies called spread spectrum communications. The Russians were unable to jam USA crosstalk or track the trajectories of our most lethal weapons.  

The Russians were flying blind, and it hurt them, big-time. These secret technologies have since become the foundation of modern communications used by satellites, cell phones, and GPS. 

One pilot in the Navy had both the nerve and skill to deploy depth charges onto a nuclear submarine without risk of a direct hit, which would have released poisons. Only one had access to intelligence about Russian subs in the area — intelligence no one but a few senior officers shared. 

He was the one pilot in theater who was not flying blind. He happened to be an NSA officer, yes. He knew the rules of engagement on both sides. He spoke Russian. He trusted his training and skills. He could chase a Russian nuclear sub out of Cuban waters and turn the confrontation in our favor.

It’s what he did.

Enough said.

Researchers told Oliver Stone that we were flying blind; it was only luck and a Russian political operative who prevented a nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. So, he wrote it down.

What else could he do? He wasn’t there. I was. I lived with one of the key players. We ate breakfast and dinner together almost every single day.

Maybe most on the aircraft carrier USS Randolph and its escort ships were sailing blind, like Stone suggested; maybe most of the pilots were flying blind; but not everyone. Maybe, sometimes, people get lucky.

That’s what Dad believed. He always said, people make their own luck.

Practice, preparation, persistence, plus perception based on the best intelligence; the best equipment; the best technology — there is nothing lucky or blind about any of it.

Add a little patriotism.

It’s why we win.

Billy Lee

Random Reads:

LAMBERT W FUNCTION

The math behind the Lambert function is mind-bogglingly complicated to most people. …>>

ELEPHANT ON THE ISLAND

USA embargo or quarantine was the elephant on the island. It was in the room at every meeting between Cuba and our 1,200 officials. .... >>

MICROWAVE COFFEE

My wife and I are coffee drinkers. Bevy Mae used to drink 12 cups of caffeinated coffee everyday. By her third cup she could boogie. ...>>

HEY, GUEVARA...

Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, more than any other two people, were responsible for throwing the Mafia out of Cuba in 1959. ...

CONSCIOUS QUANTUM

How is it that all conscious humans see the same Universe? How is it that people agree on what some call an "objective" reality? ...

TOP TWEETS

Last month we published tweets from my first thirty days on Twitter. This month, we publish a sampling of my best tweets from the past. ...>>

RELATED READS

Posted on

SATAN SURRENDER

 

From the New York Times:

For those puzzled about why so many evangelical leaders were willing to endorse Donald J. Trump, the most openly irreligious major-party presidential candidate in our history, Jerry Falwell Jr. provided the answer in his singularly graceless speech at the Republican National Convention:

”Mr. Trump has added a plank to this party’s platform to repeal I.R.S. rules sponsored by Lyndon Johnson in 1954 barring churches and nonprofits from expressing political free speech.”

Mr. Falwell assured his audience, ”Trust me, the repeal of the Johnson Amendment will create a huge revolution for conservative Christians and for free speech.”

Kevin Baker, New York Times Editorial, Living in L.B.J.’s America, August 28, 2016.

Kevin Baker is a writer for the New York Times and a recipient  of the James Fenimore Cooper Prize

Before anyone starts to read this essay, which was inspired by Kevin Baker’s editorial, let me offer a controversial truth, which could dissuade some people from reading further. Why waste time with truths that are disagreeable? some might be thinking.

Here it is: The United States is the one country on Earth where the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is forbidden by law to conduct operations against civilians inside its borders. It’s the reason controversial people come here. The USA is a safe place for dissidents. The concept of freedom (whatever that is) has nothing to do with it.

In other countries, men and women who have run afoul of USA strategic objectives have sometimes disappeared. Enough said.

It’s a violation of US law to discuss the CIA and its associations with American institutions. I can’t be more specific other than to say that the CIA, like other super-sized organizations, must train and equip, house and deploy hundreds-of-thousands of people (the actual number is classified) to work for, with, or under its guidance. It’s a huge undertaking.

The CIA is TEAM USA. It’s big, and it’s complicated. It’s on our side. Some good people work there. Some of them would like to have more say about what happens here in America where we live. Enough said.

If you are still reading, let me get on with it.

Of the 195 countries on Earth, only 75 do not have intelligence agencies. Of the 120 or so countries that do, 15 to 20 conduct operations extensive enough to influence the policies of their adversaries and, yes, their allies. Influencing public opinion is a big part of what these two dozen intelligence services do — especially when conducting operations in competing democracies.

With most foreign intelligence agencies the United States keeps certain agreements that delineate the boundaries of acceptable conduct. Russian intelligence agents don’t assassinate our civilians, nor we theirs — things like that. The details of the agreements differ depending on the country.

The “Temple” or “Church” or “Mosque” — call it whatever — was always the primary institution used by intelligence services in the past to influence public opinion and monitor people’s behavior. Hundreds of books and histories have been written about it. Those who don’t believe, read a book; learn something.

I don’t want my essay to go off the rails, but let me remind readers about the Divine Right of Kings doctrine, the institution of confessionals, the Inquisition, and secret monastic orders imbedded in populations, and on and so on. These intelligence structures and systems existed in the past and persist in most major religions and denominations to this day.

Martin Luther King mug shot in Birmingham Jail in 1963 2
This is what the real Divine Right of Kings looks like. Martin Luther King Jr., Baptist Pastor, won the Nobel Peace Prize almost one year after Birmingham police took this mugshot in 1963 and jailed him. The kings who receive divine missions from God don’t always look like some Christians think they should. King called on the USA to repent of its sins involving segregation and racism. Like all prophets of God, haters killed him; his call remains unanswered to this day.

In the past, each country had its own state-sponsored religion. In many parts of the world state religions are still encouraged and supported.

In the United States, people fought a revolution to get religion out of government; it was an institution that the founders thought would rot our new republic from within by gutting the values of freedom-of-thought and speech for non-enlightened extremists whose purpose was earthly power, not the salvation of souls.

In the 1950s, a form of right-wing extremism got a grip on the American public that was truly frightening. (Remember McCarthyism?) It cloaked itself in the Constitution and the Bible. Its stated purpose was to defeat Communism, which it portrayed as godless and authoritarian.

What the leaders of the John Birch Society and other like-minded extremists wanted most was the political power to turn back trends that they believed would unravel the social order — trends like pop music (rock and roll), integration of the races, the rise of unions, voting rights for minorities, and things like that.

It’s why Lyndon Johnson, a powerful liberal Senator from Texas, tacked an amendment on a bill in 1954, when Republican Eisenhower was president and the GOP controlled Congress. Representative government would be ill-advised to permit charitable groups like churches to lobby for political candidates by spending their flock’s flood of tax-deductible money on elections.  

If folks want to hear a reason why this separation of church and state is important, look to media to see what has happened there. Many of our news-outlets are owned and operated by foreign nationals, for example.

In those few media outlets where foreign nationals (some dual-citizens) are not owners, the rest are billionaires; you know, the kind of people who own football teams.

Diversity of political thought among billionaires is notoriously limited; they have the reputation of Neanderthals; it’s why Congress set up public broadcasting stations like NPR — diversity of opinion might be a good thing, they thought.

In the year 2000, Fox News helped throw the election of Al Gore to the defeated George W. Bush. An Australian businessman and his Chinese wife owned Fox News. They each had an ideological stake in the outcome of the election. Their assault against the election of Al Gore became an exercise in bullying on a grand scale.

I watched Fox News in real time spew their venom and lies with an intensity that shocked me. After thirty-six days of lies and propaganda, on December 12, the Supreme Court stepped in where they had no legal jurisdiction and put an end to it — they stopped an ongoing vote recount in the state of Florida to avoid the long court fights and violence the folks at Fox News promised and delivered, in some cases, through their surrogates in the GOP.

The election result doomed America to suffer terrorism, endless war, and a financial collapse that sucked dry one-third of the money in people’s retirement accounts. The financial meltdown  led to world-wide destabilization, especially in Europe and the Middle-East.

Imagine Pastor Jerry Falwell Jr.’s church buying Fox News and pushing candidates and right-wing causes consistent with his twisted vision for America. It’s a lot of tax-free political power for a preacher.

With the repeal of the 1954 LBJ rules, these predator-preachers will multiply to become tens of thousands. The repeal will provide temptations to actors who might not necessarily be Christian or even religious to use the power of the church to corrupt our politics, establish a caliphatic vision, and seize power.

If these religious politicians get their way, they will create an American caliphate; a nation under a Christian version of Sharia law. They will make war between the world’s great religions more likely.

If nothing else, history teaches that wars over religion are bloody; always cruel. Read about the Crusades or Spain’s conquest of South America.

What bothers me is that leaders of religions or cartels (or foreign governments, for that matter) influence our discourse and choose our leaders. It doesn’t seem democratic, at least to me. It doesn’t seem to be a dynamic of governance that our founding-fathers would approve.

The hacking of secure computers and other information technology during the current election by hostile states is demoralizing; especially when Russian intelligence is directing it, as the Department of Homeland Security has said.

burning cross

Let’s face facts. Some in our country have gone over the edge. We have a billionaire, self-funded, running for president. He took control of the Republican Party by pandering for the votes of white supremacists (some call them the alt-right) who fly the Confederate flag in their front yards and on the back of their trucks.

Go to Charlotte, Michigan and drive through white, working-class neighborhoods, anyone who doesn’t believe it.

After WWII, Michigan was the northern state with the largest population of Ku Klux Klan members. White supremacists are obsessed by fire; especially burning crosses. People haven’t changed much in some places. Many supremacists plan to vote for the GOP nominee.

Worse, these haters adore the orange-man with floppy hair who married two women born and raised in communist countries allied with Russia. His current wife grew up in a province of communist Yugoslavia — renamed Slovenia in 1991. 

Give me a break.

The biggest intelligence coup a foreign government can achieve is to place a sympathizer in the bed of a powerful man — one who has publicly aspired to be president for twenty-five years. She only has to spill one secret at the right time to be worth her weight in gold; to change the course of history — and not in a good way; not for our side, anyway.

Melania Knauss Trump
Melania Knauss; born April 1970. Melania is 46. Her husband is 70.

Is Melanija Knavs (she Germanized her name to Melania Knauss) a Russian sleeper agent? Of course not. The idea is preposterous. Her father was a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, which had ties to the Soviet Union. He administered a state-run business enterprise. No problems there.

But wouldn’t everyone sleep better at night if Donald turned over his tax filings, balance sheets, and income statements? Wouldn’t the country be reassured if he disclosed the details of Melania’s immigration to the United States and her personal history; especially the history of her life before he dumped his second wife (with whom he bore a child out-of-wedlock) and brought Melanija Knavs to America to become his third wife? The two married in 2005. Melania became a US citizen in 2006.

Clout craving Christians, like the Reverend Jerry Falwell Jr., seem to believe that they can make a Faustian bargain and come away with the power and influence they covet. They can make a deal with a man who seems to lack a track record in any church to turn their right-wing political agenda into an army for God.

NOTE BY EDITORIAL BOARD: On August 25, 2020 Jerry Falwell accepted a $10.5 million severance package from Liberty University to step down. Like Adam in the Garden of Eden, he blamed his wife for the sex scandals that followed him pretty much everywhere during his tenure. 

It’s the offer Satan made to Christ during the forty days and nights Jesus lived in the desert without food or water. He got physically weak. His defenses crumbled. He lay in the dust weak and vulnerable. All he had to defend him were the words of Almighty God. 

Who knows the story?

… Satan took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. All this I will give to you, he said, if you will bow down and worship me. Jesus said to him, Get away from me Satan. For it is written: Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only. Then Satan left Jesus, and angels came to care for him. 

[from the book of Matthew]

Whatever this election is about, it should not be about power. Why not make it about doing what is right?

Why not make it about helping people and preserving peace? Make it about about forgiving and being forgiven. Make it about loving others — even enemies; especially our enemies.

Love wins.

Is anyone left who believes it?

Billy Lee

4 July 2018: The 2016 election is nearly two years past. Billy Lee asked us, The Editorial Board, to add an addendum to his essay. It’s a kind of warning lifted from the ancient scrolls of the Bible, of all places.

The more priests there were, the more they sinned against me; they exchanged their glorious God for something disgraceful. They feed on the sins of my people and relish their wickedness. And it will be: Like people, like priests. I will punish both… A whirlwind will sweep them away… 

Hosea 4: 7, 8, 19

Random Reads:

CHATGPT IS MY FRIEND

Experienced programmers learned the hard way that humans can't create neural networks without injecting unintended bugs, right? Until wreckage is discovered, glitches lie dormant. They don't get fixed. If anything, bugs emerge, morphing into viruses to invade wherever they will. ...>>

ILLUSIONS

ISIS was formed by Saddam's family and loyal remnants of his army who are trying to take back what they lost during the Bush presidency. ...>>

BALANCE

People who played ball with the Russians to take down the “deep state” might want to consider that they risk being arrested someday for treason...>>

BLAISE PASCAL: THOUGHTS

Blaise Pascal was a man who suffered terribly his entire life until he died at age 39 from a metastasized stomach cancer. ...

NO GOOD DEED...

No Good Deed... is a work of fiction by Billy Lee. Events and persons depicted in the story exist in the imagination of the writer. ... >>

ARTIFICIAL SUPER-INTELLIGENCE

Artificial super-intelligence will-- repeat, WILL -- embed itself into systems humans can't live without to ensure that no one disables it. …>>

RELATED READS

Posted on

SEGREGATION TAX

Note: Those who have followed the events of the past month will be relieved to learn that Billy Lee and his illegitimate son, Billy Lee Junior, have reconciled. (Can we all just accept it and move on?)

Billy Lee encouraged Junior to write this newest essay, Segregation Tax, to reassure the little b*****d of his unconditional love and trust. The matter of Junior defacing our offices and almost destroying our web-site is behind us.

No hard feelings, says Billy Lee, no matter what the haters say.

The Editorial Board

We Need a Segregation Tax.

Thank you, Daddy, for letting me publish my essay. And thanks to Fanny Jean who fixed grammar and punctuation.

From now on schools, businesses and homeowners in America will be taxed every year they continue to operate in all-white, non-black settings.

The segregation tax doubles each year until these schools, universities, businesses, corporations, and neighborhoods either integrate or go into default. The revenues from the segregation tax will be ear-marked to reduce national debt and fund programs for the poor.

The number of black people needed by businesses, schools, and neighborhoods to trigger avoidance of the segregation tax will be tied to some agreed-upon fraction of the population of black people in the states where they live.

For practical reasons related to difficulties of implementation, my recommendation is to set the fraction to one-quarter. If black folks are 12% of the population in the particular state where they live, then at least one-fourth of 12% (that is, 3%) of their neighbors, school-mates, and co-workers must be black to permit any who are not African American to dodge tax penalties.

A good case-in-point is the recent Republican National Convention.

2,500 delegates attended; 18 delegates were African American. Under the formula, the RNC would pay the segregation tax because at minimum 83 of the delegates should have been black. If the number represented their full proportion of the population, 330 black delegates would have participated.

Everyone knows the GOP is racist; especially its new standard bearer, right? Under my proposal, the GOP could remain racist, foolish, and cruel as long as its members fork over the money.

If my proposal (described below) was in effect this year, the GOP would have paid $50 dollars for pigheadedness. But consider this: had the segregation tax been enacted the day President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the GOP would owe—due to the tax law’s yearly doubling—$22,500 TRILLION dollars. The tax would pay the national debt one-thousand times over.

Segregation tax, we want white tenants
The sooner the United States passes a Segregation Tax, the better.

If we get it right with the folks we abused the most, maybe other minority groups can follow and everyone will be treated fairly—once everyone understands they don’t have a choice.

We have to start with black people because they were brought to America in chains; they’ve been abused by slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, state-terrorism, and a system of regulations both written and unwritten known collectively as systemic-racism. They are the one minority least able to conceal their ethnicity by dress, hairstyle, or make-up. They cannot hide like other minorities sometimes do.

Freedom to discriminate against others based on the circumstances of their birth is not freedom; it is a vile attack on freedom and not only freedom but also the dignity of every human being who, according to the sages of old, is created in the image of God—a cosmic force of truth and love who is alleged by some to have ignited the Big Bang.

Shunning and abusing an entire race or group of people is national suicide. No country that does it survives, right? History is proof. Racism has to end sometime. Why not now? Why not right now while we still have time left to save ourselves?

Maybe start with a tax of $50 dollars the first year. It won’t stop discrimination but it will get people’s attention because everyone will be put on notice that the tax exists and is certain to double to $100 the following year and keep doubling year after year. By year 10, the tax will rise to $25,000 per year per household, business, and school. By year 15, the tax will affect the wealthy; it will by then be nearly one-million dollars.

At year 20, the tax on businesses that operate with the help of less than, say, 3% black people; or the tax on a family who chooses to live in gated-community with less than 3% black people; or the tax on private and public schools with less than 3% in their faculty and student bodies will rise to 30 million dollars.

If America continues to remain as segregated in year twenty as it is now, our national debt can be paid-off by the collection of the segregation tax; our government will at last be profitable; it will accumulate surpluses to enable the funding of social-programs-on-steroids.

A segregation tax spent reducing debt and funding programs for the poor is a win-win for everyone. After integrating and diversifying neighborhoods, businesses, and schools we become a more righteous nation worthy of less derision than we now receive from a world watching everything we say and do. 

The benefit of righteous living is that we avoid revolution; we avoid chaos in our streets from humiliated people who have nothing left to lose. Of course, some haters may choose to live with this risk.

Some haters might continue to choose segregation. They might choose to pay the segregation tax, which by year 26 will be 1.7 billion dollars per year per family, per school, per corporation, per business, per university, per club, per political party, per whatever institution or organization haters choose to join.

If some refuse to integrate and diversify, the segregated poor will have showered on them by the tax code all the wealth of the nation’s haters. They will no longer need them. The world will witness the biggest transfer of wealth in the history of humankind.

One more thing: a segregation tax has to benefit African Americans only; otherwise other discriminated-against minorities will muscle their way in; blacks will find themselves standing at the end of the line one more time as they have under other programs such as the infamous “affirmative action” programs of old.

Some may remember how unfairly applied these ancient programs were.  Everyone but blacks benefitted. People substituted white foreign-nationals to gain advantages. They pushed black folks to the back of the bus like they always do. 

black baby segregation tax
When I grow up, I’m going to need a safe place to live with people who love and respect me. I’m going to need a good job, and police to protect me. How about it, America?

The process of discrimination against blacks under affirmative action became so institutionalized and ingrained that the Supreme Court of Michigan banned affirmative action programs in their state colleges and universities last year.

Statistics proved them right. Blacks were being admitted to colleges at the lowest rate of any minority group based on their population. (Read daddy’s article on the Speedos page, anyone who doesn’t believe it.)

Every other minority group benefitted from affirmative action except black people, who the legislators intended to be the primary beneficiaries.

Uh oh…. Am I  imagining readers jumping off sofas, throwing laptops, and wagging fingers in what they think is my gutless-liberal face?

I think I am. 

Are you out of your mind? they scream; foam spewing. Black people won’t live in our neighborhoods. They can’t afford it! 

Well, maybe some neighborhoods will have to chip-in to set aside a few houses where black families can live for free. What could be the harm in that?

Some neighborhoods might have to take up collections to actually pay families to live in their disagreeable hollows; maybe large sums if the neighborhood is overrun with hillbillies carrying pitchforks and oversized stun-guns.

When people stop to really think about it, I believe they will find that it’s going to be cheaper to hire black people to be their neighbors than to pay the segregation tax.

I think folks can see where I’m going with this. No imagined obstacle is going to be as difficult as paying the segregation tax. People who can’t or won’t pay will go bankrupt; even have their houses and businesses seized.

And that is how it should be. People who malign and exclude African Americans—after all the hell they’ve suffered—are no better than farm animals. Put racists in a pen and let them rot in their own manure. They are fit for nothing. They certainly aren’t fit to live in a modern, civilized country, which the United States of America aspires to be.

Under my proposal, nice homes in integrated neighborhoods everywhere in America (not just in a few hundred or so enlightened districts) could become available to black citizens within a few years. Good jobs and quality education might become available to a people long denied in every state—severely denied in some places, like southern Florida.

Some people might have noticed that I haven’t said a thing about churches. A writer on Wikipedia claims that 37% of Americans attend church every week. No one needs to be reminded that churches are among the most segregated places in America.

I don’t go to church, so I wouldn’t know, but I asked my daddy, Billy Lee, about it, because he goes to church almost every week.  It’s mostly because his wife makes him, but still…

Daddy said my proposal won’t work with churches that ostracize minorities because we don’t tax churches in the United States. Churches belong to God. People who persist in sin and resist God’s Will go to Hell, where they are nailed to two-by-fours and hung to bleed until the end of time.

Churches are safe places for raging sinners to hang out until they discover how really evil they are and change more or less voluntarily. My plan, daddy said, is coercive. It forces people to be good.

God doesn’t work that way. He gives people plenty of time to set things right—an entire lifetime for most. Eventually, they or Jesus ends up paying for the bad things they’ve done. It’s a choice, and most folks get a lifetime to make it. That’s daddy’s explanation. It sounds crazy.

Anyway, maybe we could write-in a clause that gives preferential treatment to black veterans and their families—you know, the people who risk their lives so we can live like plantation owners compared to billions of impoverished people in other parts of the world—not to mention tens-of-millions of anonymous poor who rot inside inner-cities and ghettos.

Another idea, which daddy said I should not write about, at least right now: why not charge police unions 100 million dollars for each black citizen they kill? During the past few years we could have raised billions for the poor.

Another forbidden idea: any cop who kills someone, even when justified, loses the right to carry outside their house for 5 years—on duty or not. It might cut down on non-judicial executions.

Another idea: anyone who has contact with a prisoner who dies in custody for any reason loses their right to carry for one year. Think about it. It might encourage law enforcement to take better care of humans, who in the USA are presumed innocent until found guilty by a court of law.

B L Junior

P.S. Thank you, Daddy, for letting me publish my essay. Sorry I fired your editors and messed-up your office during your vacation. It won’t happen again. Promise.

Random Reads:

CAPITALISM AND INCOME INEQUALITY

Capitalism differs little from Slavery until the legal environment secures certain rights to labor. USA crafted a Bill of Rights. ...

GAY LOVE AND CHRISTIAN PRIDE

Grace is central. So says Psalm 32 and Romans 4. ''Blessed are those whose sin the Lord will never count against them.'' ...>>

CONFESSING UNDER TORTURE

I was tortured. I confessed to everything. The odds seem good I may have actually done some version of the shameful things I confessed. ...>>

KILLING FRENZY

Elites get to be elite through in-fighting, war, intrigue, and politics. They are, for the most part, desensitized to violence. ...>>

WHY DO HUMANS LIKE MUSIC?

No one knows why humans like music when we hear certain patterns of sound and tempo. Scientists are conducting research to learn why. ...>>

FLYING BLIND

Everyone flies blind except the pilot. He's trained. He knows what to do. With any luck at all, the pilot will land the plane -- safely. ...>>

RELATED READS