A Trip To The Dope Store

It's legal to buy recreational marijuana now in Michigan. . .hey, Michigan is cool!

I wondered what it's like to buy dope?  I mean, is it just like walking into a 7-Eleven and buying a pack of KOOLs?

No. [sigh.]  No. [sigh.]   

No, it's not just like walking into a 7-Eleven and buying a pack of KOOLs.  No.  It's more like driving to the pot store (with the rather cumbersome name Exclusive Ann Arbor Medical & Recreational Marijuana) and then being directed into a huge semi-heated tent attached to the pot store and then standing in a 200 person line for two hours and forty-five minutes and then being admitted, ten at a time, into the pot store inner sanctum where a crew of 5 *budtenders* take your order at the pot counter and charge you $24 a gram (+16% for various taxes).   That's what it's like. . .

I don't smoke dope.  I smoked a little dope in my teens, but it just made me tired.  I should say, it just made me more tired.  I've always been tired, I was born tired, and I've lived my entire life tired, not because I can't sleep, I have no problem sleeping, it's just that when I wake up, I'm still tired because I've always had a tiring sleep, when I was a child I had nightmares, and as an adult I dream I am at work, so. . .I'm always tired, and hence dope doesn't do anything for me except exaggerate my natural tired state.

A friend wanted to buy some dope, so I decided to tag along, just to see what it was like.  Neither the friend nor me had any idea it was going to be a three hour ordeal.

Well, apparently dope stores are a good business with a future of solid growth.@@

It was no aberration, the long line. . .

It's like that everyday. . .all day, every day, according to the *budtender* when asked if there was a less busy time to visit.

You see, it's not just people in my town who go to the dope store.  It's not just people in my state who go to the dope store.  There were people waiting in line who had driven from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin.  I suppose if you can afford to buy in bulk it's worth the trip? 

Well, I must say the loooonnng wait in line (where the back half of the tent where the space heater is located is warm, and the front half of the tent is chilly) was as pleasant as could be expected, the people were quiet and orderly.  No jostling.  Everybody respected a small amount of personal space.  The crowd was probably 90% white, which surprised me, I was expecting a more *Cypress Hill* crowd.  There were all ages, though mostly young.

The store staff and *budtenders* were a mix of hipsters, thug life wannabes and old school stoners.  The store had a small collection of disappointingly dull t-shirts and no obviously apparent *Cheech&Chong-ish* paraphernalia. 

All told, it was a long, boring three hours. . .recommended only for those who REALLY REALLY want to buy dope legally.

@@I suppose as robots and AI take more and more jobs, and as more and more people sit around with nothing to do but wait for their universal basic income checks, these are the types of *new industries* that will flourish: vices that were previously illegal.  More and more drugs will be legalized, just as more and more forms of gambling are now being legalized, and just as sex will probably become legalized.

The True Significance Of The Jesus Star

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel. Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also. When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way. . .Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.

What does this birth narrative of Jesus teach us?

The world's kingdoms are not God's kingdom. The way of the world is not God's way. The world's kingdoms operate under Satanic order.

The world order at the time of the incarnation was anti-Christ.

And even though Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of God, some 2000 years later the world order remains anti-Christ.

The world order and God's kingdom are adversaries. Herod would not step aside for the Kingdom of God. Herod sought to kill the Christ child to maintain the Satanic World Order.

Herod knew Christ was a threat to his world order.  Christ remains a threat to the world order of our day (including, as it did in Herod's day, the religious world order: there shall not be left here one stone upon another).

The Satanic World Order remains to this day. Anyone who pledges allegiance to a kingdom of the world is an anti-Christ. If you subjugate any of Jesus' kingdom teachings to a world kingdom, you are an anti-Christ. For example, an American who supports war is anti-Christ, for Christ (and the early Church) clearly taught against war (Luke 9:51-56, The Early Christian Attitude to War). An American who supports neoliberalism (including usurious finance capitalism) is anti-Christ (Luke 6:24, 30, 34, 38, Mathew 6:19-21, 24, Acts 2:44-45).

The birth narrative of Jesus teaches the way of the world is wrong, the True Way is God's Kingdom, which He sent His Son to show. The Jesus star is the star of our True King. As the wise men show, you cannot follow the Jesus star and the way of the world. They are at odds with each other.  The individual must decide for one or the other.  

But as I look around our miserable American world this Christmas Day, I see a church that is largely compromised with self-proclaimed Christians who live their lives in the futile struggle to serve two masters.  They live as the world lives 6 days a week, supporting war and chasing money and many of the other ways of the Satanic World Order, then on Sunday they line-up in the Communion drive-through for a thimble of grape juice and a tiny cube or circle of bread, supposedly done in remembrance of Him. 

The true significance of Christmas has been buried under the bows, ribbons and wrapping paper of the Consumer Holy Day. 

Christmas is now meant as the orgy of the material way of life in the Satanic World Order. Man is no longer meant to be fruitful and multiply, spreading the Image of God through the Cosmos, but meant to consume the flesh of Satan.  

The Western man in particular is a sad soul-less loser, having given his life to the pursuit of money (trained from birth the mission of life is to *get a good job*).  The money is spent on a lifetime of endless consumption, and even now, in our late stage neoliberalism, consumption has become a near 24 hour a day occupation, for the Western loser not only consumes material objects, he must now spend his *free time* consuming electronic objects.  The GoogleAppleFacebookAmazon Man. GAFA Man gives his soul in the form of data in exchange for a virtual existence.

The story of Christmas is the story of a world that is wrong, and of its Creator sending His Son as True King to show the right way.  

Why is there so little evidence of the Kingdom of God in the world today?  It's simple.  Practically no one follows the Jesus Star@@.

Instead of choking our souls with material junk on Christmas, we ought to be examining our souls.  On Christmas Day we ought to ask ourselves:

Are we following the way of the world?  Or are we following the Jesus Star?  

@@In America those who call themselves followers of Jesus are, by and large, the most fanatical supporters of war and neoliberalism.  In point of fact, one of these false followers recently compared the impeachment of Donald Trump to the trial of Jesus!  Some even claim Trump was chosen by God to lead this worldly kingdom of America!  Thus, they attribute to God that which is in the domain of Satan!     

The Disgraced Funnyman Louis C.K.

Thursday night at the Royal Oak Music Theater I attended a comedy performance by the disgraced funnyman Louis C.K.  You will remember C.K. got caught in the #MeToo wave a couple years ago when stories surfaced alleging Louis had a *tendency* to expose his penis and stroke it until ejaculation in front of women who didn't ask to see that particular *stand-up* act.  When C.K. confessed to his offensive masturbation mania, his skyrocketing career immediately crashed and burned: a completed movie was pulled from distribution, FX, with whom he had several successful projects, dropped him, TBS canceled a planned series, Netflix canceled a concert show and HBO removed his specials from their on-demand service.  Louis has claimed his aggressive wanking habit cost him $35 million in lost income.

But now Louis is back on the stand-up circuit trying to resurrect his career, and he began his Thursday night set by asking: so how's your last two years been?  He told the audience he learned a lot in his exile: how to eat alone in a restaurant while people point a middle finger at him, who his real friends are (sadly, not the cool people he liked, but the insufferable boors he could previously barely tolerate).  After this quick recap, C.K. veered into a quixotic array of topics: religion, three-legged dogs, legless humans, Auschwitz, 9/11, the sex lives of mothers, European villages, little shops, retardation, and many others—all skillfully woven together in Louis' trademark narrative style examining the often-absurd minutiae of human experience and revealing our hypocritical, irrational, or just plain dumb reactions to the everyday events of our bewildering lives.  And yes, Louis is still the funniest son-of-a-bitch out there.  He received a well-deserved standing ovation at the conclusion of his roughly 40 minute performance.

Late in the set C.K. did return more specifically to the solo sex acts which caused his downfall.  He claimed he always asked the women first if he could show them his penis before exposing it, and that his real mistake was not being able to discern that their seeming acceptance of his masturbation masked a disgust they were too intimidated to express.  By splicing this defense into a couple jokes, it was clear Louis felt his punishment (public shame/lost income) far exceeded his *crime.*  Should this detract from our estimation of C.K.?  I've learned from toiling nine years in a county jail that Judas hanging himself over his misdeed is the exception, rather than the rule, of human nature.  Most of us tend to be more merciful to ourselves than our neighbors.  

What was more troubling was the angry nihilism in much of C.K.'s routine, particularly the bits focused on *religion.*  A self-proclaimed *atheist,* C.K. spent a fair amount of his time belligerently pondering God's nature, and, in one regrettable instance, posited a vulgar second death for Jesus.  Due to Louis' spiritual vitriol, one could suspect a latent tendency common to *atheists:* the blame of God for their plagues.  Unable or unwilling to fully locate the source of their troubles within themselves, they look for a supernatural cause.  We suspect C.K. of a subconscious accusation against God: God caused Louis' fall from his beloved celebrity.  God either cursed him with his masturbation mania, or refused to protect him from its revelation.  Why me, God?

It would have been obvious to even the most casual observer in Thursday night's audience that the disgraced funnyman Louis CK bemoans his besmirched state.  Though there was always a mordant tinge to C.K.'s humor, it was leavened with a schlub's optimism.  Though undeniably still funny, the laughs are now produced by a bitter, resentful wit.  While watching C.K.'s almost *thanks for nothing* acceptance of the audience's ovation, I couldn't help but imagine a dark ending for the still-master jokester if he proves unable to rehabilitate his celebrity.

The Boston Strangler

I remember seeing this movie as a kid, maybe when I was 10 or 12 years old, and thinking it was pretty cool.  Then a couple days ago I see it's showing on FXM.  I figured I would watch it and laugh at how hokey and dated it would now seem.  After all, this thing was made 51 years ago.  We're used to shit like Se7en, now.  Well, this almost docudrama-style telling of the Boston Strangler case (13 strangled women, most of them old bags, but a couple young hotties thrown in the mix), has held up remarkably well.  In fact, I would say it seems far less dopey than The Silence of the Lambs, a movie made 23 years later, but which with its *fava beans and a nice chianti* killer now seems pretty campy.

The biggest drawback to The Boston Strangler is the film's first half features numerous split screen shots, of which only a few really work (the ones showing victims and the oblivious people about to discover them).  The split screen shit must have seemed quite film school avant-garde back in the day, but viewed in 2019 it's mainly distracting.  

Although I say the movie has a docudrama feel to it, it must be noted the story presents a highly fictionalized version of the strangler, Albert DeSalvo.  He's portrayed as suffering from a split personality and being unaware of his crimes until the film's *dramatic* ending, so don't watch this thing expecting some Wikipedia DeSalvo, watch it instead as a luridly gripping (put ID Network in a time machine set to 1968) serial killer movie inspired by the Strangler case.

I guarantee you will be surprised by how much homosexuality, sex perversion and fetish is shown and discussed in this 51 year old movie.  The great actor William Hickey plays with pathetic perfection one of the sad perverts the police mistakenly suspect as the Strangler—you'll feel so sorry for him, you'll want to go to Poshmark and get him a Louis Vuitton bag (watch the movie and you'll understand the reference).  

The police call homosexuals *faggots,* but in one scene set in a gay bar, Henry Fonda, who (blandly, as usual) plays the guy in charge of the Strangler task force, acknowledges the humanity of a fag, I mean, gay character (that had to be quite forward thinking back in 1968, no?).

What really holds this film together, and keeps it watchable to this day, is the remarkable performance by Tony Curtis as Albert DeSalvo.  Curtis isn't even on screen for the first half of the movie, which shows the crime scenes and follows law enforcement's futile attempts to identify the Strangler.  Just as the novelty of the pervert and fetishist suspects is starting to wear off, and you begin to tire of the police procedural, Curtis appears, looking sad and strangely alone as he sits in a chair watching JFK's funeral on television, while his wife and kids make a racket in the kitchen.

The last hour of the movie is devoted to the slow unraveling of Curtis' DeSalvo, and it's a performance that few actors could pull off, for it demands one of the most difficult-to-navigate scenes in movie history, which we will detail next.  But what's amazing is that it's Tony Curtis!  People today probably don't even know who he is, but Curtis was a *movie star!*  The guy was mainly known as a pretty boy, a lightweight who mostly did comedies and romances.  But this film was shot when Curtis was pretty much a has-been, headed for TV roles.  Still, it must have been quite a shock for 1968 audiences to see the former gOOfball from Some Like It Hot rip open a woman's dress, tie her to a bed and then punch the shit out of her.  Try imagining Tom Hanks playing the BTK killer instead of Mr. Rogers.

Anyway, about that difficult-to-navigate scene: The Boston Strangler ends with a loooonnng near-monologue in which Curtis-as-DeSalvo discovers his murderer's personality, and it requires Curtis to pantomime one of his murders.  I can imagine 99 out of 100 actors trying this, and failing. . .failing so badly as to provoke disbelieving laughter from the audience.  It's amazing that the former *matinee idol* Curtis pulls this scene off, but he does.  In fact, he owns it, it's all there, a killer's soul lit up by sick desire, the euphoria of the prey in his grip, the rage to kill and the orgasmic little death of the kill, the whimpering withdrawal and then the crash to self-disgust and denial.  It's a forgotten great performance from a forgotten movie that was ahead of its time.  

This, That, And The Other Things. . .

The Impeachment of Donald J. Trump: It's a matter of very little consequence, and I have even less interest in it than its meager merit.  I suppose the favorable outcome would be Trump re-elected, which would hasten the much-needed decline of America.  What is extremely bothersome, and a sign of the times, is the attitude of many *conservative republican* self-proclaimed Christians: that Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ weeps for Donald J. Trump.  I suppose other things could be further from the truth, but. . .the Heavenly Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, trust me, are not fretting over that fat pussy Donald.  Self-proclaimed Christians who waste prayer time on the impeachment would do well to open their Bibles to Matthew 7:21-23 and pray instead the Holy Spirit give them insight into themselves, and then re-workout their own salvation with much phobias and traumas.

The Walking Dead: The first half of Season 10 has been slightly better than the horrible Season 9, due chiefly to Negan being released from character purgatory. The rest of the characters and storylines are just as lame and nauseatingly diverse as the last couple crappy seasons, in which the viewer could only fidget through the achingly dull and patronizingly pedagogical We Are The World scripts wishing death for the expanding cast of annoying awareness ribbon characters. Thankfully one such character, the *good muslim* Siddiq, was killed off in Episode 7, and as he lay dying, I was prompted to make a list of TWD's All-Time 10 Most Annoying Characters:

1. Andrea, neurotic ugly cunt
2. Henry, ADHD half-wit
3. Eugene, Fat pseudo-Dr. Smith with a mullet
4. Carol, mousy doormat improbably turned Wonder Woman
5. Every homo character (especially Aaron)
6. Every black character (including saint Morgan/excluding psycho Morgan)
7. Glenn, delivery boy dork improbably turned teenage mutant ninja turtle
8. Carl, twerpy tween improbably turned popeyed messiah
9. Jerry, fat gook court jester
10. Judith, Family Dollar Hit Girl

The National Football League: I watched the 49ers/Ravens game today.  Good game.  Resembled an old school Big 10 contest.  The Ravens game winning field goal *drive* went maybe 30 yards, and took 6 fucking minutes off the clock!  Woody Hayes' ghost spurted ectoplasm.  Anyway, we were told last week that Ravens' QB Lamar Jackson had *changed the NFL.*  OK.  We're told this every year about some new fad.  Remember Chip Kelly?  Remember the RPO?  Remember Sean McVay?  Patrick Mahomes?  Every year the NFL is *changed,* yet it somehow remains its same monotonous self. Did you see the Auburn - Alabama game?  No NFL game can ever match that energy, emotion and random craziness.  The college game is superior, and always will be.  But, Lamar Jackson.  Yeah, he can run.  But so could Bobby Douglass almost 50 years ago.  Bobby couldn't pass for shit. . .and neither can Lamar Jackson.  Bobby Douglass had a shitty Chicago Bears team surrounding him, and they lost week-in and week-out.  Lamar Jackson is on a solid Ravens team. . .but if the Ravens are ever down 10 points in the 4th quarter, forget it, they're beat.  Jackson is a horrible passer. The Lamar Jackson NFL will last about as long as the Chip Kelly NFL.

US Workforce Dying At A Record Pace: So read the headline of a recent news story which states the engine that powers the world’s most potent economy is dying at a worrisome pace, a “distinctly American phenomenon’’ with no easily discernible cause or simple solution. Those are some of the conclusions from a comprehensive new study by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University showing that mortality rates for U.S. adults ages 25-64 continue to increase, driving down the general population’s life expectancy for at least three consecutive years. The study paints a bleak picture of a workforce plagued by drug overdoses, suicides and organ-system diseases while grappling with economic stresses.  While I agree there is no simple solution, there is an easily discernible cause, which I recently explained recently here. 

A Movie, Some Netflix Shows

Midsommar: Twenty-something Dani is a fairly typical modern American white girl: an anxious, depressed, clingy mess. . .and that's before her sister and parents die in a murder/suicide.  After that, well, she's even more of a bummer, such a wreck that her boyfriend Christian (a typical American Christian, in that he's not Christian) wants to sneak away to a Swedish commune and enjoy its once-every-ninety years grand celebration of all things white and pagan.  But Dani finds out about Christian's little getaway, so Christian, burdened by guilt, invites her to join him and a few of his other pals for the holy pagan days under northern Sweden's never-setting summer sun.  Midsommar starts out as an eerie, creepily effective juxtaposition of modern scientific and ancient pagan treatments for the disordered mind, but soon melts under the hot Scandinavian sun into a muddled puddle of pagan nonsense. None of the rituals make any sense, but they do make for arty, gOOfy, gory daylight nightmares: for example, two old people dive off a cliff, one face-first, the other feet-first, onto boulders, and then have what remains of their skulls crushed with a giant mallet.  There is no point in bothering to wonder what any of Midsommar's bloody and/or kinky faux-rituals mean.  They are meaningless, and, if we want to give the sometimes black-humored script a credit it may not deserve, may simply be viewed as Grand Guignol placebo effects, which somehow manage at film's end to leave poor sad Dani with a smile on her face.  Midsommar is not a *good* movie, because it never seriously advances a homeopathic alternative to our xanax society, but only wallows in lurid/absurd camp paganism.  Still, one cannot deny it is an artfully constructed decadent distraction.  Perhaps one could even label it a prototype from an emerging À rebours school of film making, a celluloid version of Huysman's bejeweled tortoise shell.  

Chambers: A poor teenage Native American girl has a heart attack, and receives a rich white girl's heart in a transplant.  The Native American becomes haunted or possessed or some shit by the white girl, who died, as they say, *under mysterious circumstances,* possibly at the hands of one or more members of her weird New Age family.  Chambers is a slow-moving mess of racial and class cliches stewed in a convoluted crystals-and-shamans cult horror script. The show is too stupid and poorly acted to hold one's attention to its jumbled script.  The main character, the Native American girl, is played by a splotchy-faced newcomer named Sivan Alyra Rose.  She looks like an ashy-faced, cheaply-made Zendaya knock-off.  And her *acting* is the biggest horror of the show, she scowls and pouts through ten interminable episodes, making her character an unsympathetic victim of the heart transplant hocus-pocus.  It's hard to believe anybody watching this dreary supernatural mess could care whether her perpetual bummer of a character lives or dies.

Stranger Things, Season 3: And it's hard to believe how far this show has fallen. [If I were Rex Reed, I'd now call this an *ossified franchise*]  It has always featured a remarkably unappealing cast of pasty-faces, greasy-hairs, bug-eyes, anorexics and fat slobs, and the cast grows even more repulsive-looking with each season, and adding to the over-all ugliness of the characters in season 3, the costume designer has dressed them in the most hideous shorts and cut-offs from the '80s. . .if you love looking at spindly white legs, this is the show for you.  But the series itself has degraded from season one, which was a fairly fresh and decently plotted thriller, into season three's weird kiddie porn/sitcom/conspiracy/monster streaming bric-a-brac where Hopper spends an inordinate amount of time trying to catch the barely-teenage Mike and Eleven making-out and where shopping malls are actually a Russian plot to de-magnetize America's refrigerator magnets, or some shit.  The Mind Flayer also shows up to torment a fat old lady before possessing pool boy/gigolo-wannabe Billy, a preening bully of a character we are meant to, but do not, feel sympathy for because of one brief flashback scene showing his daddy yelling at him for being a shitty baseball player.  Anyway, other stuff happens, you know, Eleven holds out her arms and has nose bleeds in *fights* with the Mind Flayer, she gets a Mind Flayer boo-boo on her leg which Jonathan tries to fix but only manages to make the other kids take the Lord's Name in vain, two of the kids are revealed to be trendy gays, and they all squabble unmercifully for eight tedious episodes.  No show in the history of television has ever featured more screeching, shrieking and shouting.  The cast scream insults at each other in an ear-splitting atonal assault meant to mask, one supposes, the script's utter lack of harmonic development. Yes, season three's much-hyped *moving ending* is satisfying—because all the kids finally wear long pants.  That this show is still a *hit* and fairly-well reviewed, reveals just how stupid and undiscerning American audiences and critics have become.  

Dark: With an attractive cast of competent actors, this series about the apocalyptic events brewing in a small German town focuses on four dysfunctional families with more than enough skeletons in the closet to plot a dozen soap operas. . .although, given that each of the families sport a time-traveler or two, this is Soap Opera on a Cosmic Scale.  The intelligent, clever, endlessly thought-provoking script features time-traveling based on the Causal Loop Paradox, where an object or information from the future can be sent back to the past and creates a never-ending cycle in which each object no longer has any real origin, as if it exists without having been created.  The paradox of time's never-ending cycle also creates the show's heavy, tragic, fatalistic gloom.  No matter to what extraordinary lengths the characters will go to try to change the past and prevent the apocalypse, nothing avails (at least, through the show's first two seasons).  And trust me, this brief synopsis barely scratches the surface of Dark's thematic foundations.  There are cultic, biblical and mythic elements as well, that combine with the time-traveling soap operatics to create a remarkable philosophical meditation on the nature of Time and its consequences for man.  Unlike most of current movies and television, Dark is not easily forgotten.

Go Back Where You Came From!

21 July 2019: Georgia state Rep. Erica Thomas, who asserted in a tearful Facebook post that a white man at a Publix grocery store told her to "Go back to where you came from!" seems to be less sure that the Friday encounter was exactly how she remembered. After reaffirming to reporters Saturday that a white man had verbally accosted her and her daughter telling them to "go back" to where they came from in a racially charged tirade, Thomas was interrupted by the accused man himself, Eric Sparkes, who had a very different story to tell. Sparkes accused Thomas of faking the story for political purposes, saying he was, in fact, a Cuban American Democrat who was simply irritated that she brought so many groceries to the express checkout lane. Thomas rebuked Sparkes' version of events, however, in an interview later in the day on Saturday, saying, "I don't know if he said 'go back,' or those types of words ... I don't know if he said 'go back to your country' or 'go back to where you came from,' but he was making those types of references is what I remember."

A local journalist further asked her, "So you don't remember exactly what he said?" Thomas replied, "No, no, definitely not. But I know it was 'go back' because I know I told him to 'go back.'" In Thomas' original video, the black lawmaker tearfully recounted a traumatic incident in which a man began using racially charged insults after accusing her of bringing too many groceries to the express checkout line. Thomas posted the video to her Facebook account on Friday evening. Thomas' story quickly gained traction in the wake of President Trump's "go back" tweet as the media seemingly believed her version of events, and #IStandWithErica began trending on Twitter.

I have little doubt that the *white man* is telling the truth when he claims he never told the large Georgia state representative Erica Thomas to go back to her country.

It's hard not to be disgusted by Erica Thomas' crybaby Facebook video, in which she weeps over a *hate crime* that almost certainly never occurred. 

But. . .

We must remember Thomas was raised in a culture in which from her birth and continuing on throughout her entire life she has been told her skin color has disadvantaged her.

Can we therefore be surprised if her sense of victimization has become so internalized, she can no longer accurately process reality?  

Ms. Thomas admits as much herself, in her hemming-and-hawing confession that she cannot actually remember what the *white man* said to her:

But her identity has become so fused to a sense of victimhood, she is nonetheless convinced racist *references* must have been made.

To Ms. Thomas, raised as *disadvantaged,* a white person cannot simply be contrary in a conflict only because of the organic cause of the conflict, the white person must additionally be contrary because of her skin color, and thus a simple disagreement over public behavior becomes a *hate crime.*

When the *white man* approached Ms. Thomas and began to confront her over what he perceived to be her selfish use of the check-out lane, Ms. Thomas, traumatized by her lifetime of *disadvantage,* suffered a break from reality.  The psychological stress Ms. Thomas felt from being confronted by a *white man,* the fearsome figure she had been told from birth had the ability to control her life, produced a classic hysterical reaction: selective amnesia, volatile emotions, dramatic attention-seeking behavior.  

Thus, to simply call Ms. Thomas a liar, would be a disservice. 

More accurately, she should be considered psychologically retarded, and not fully responsible for her actions.  Part of the blame for her hysterical Facebook video and false claim of a *hate crime* must be assigned to the anonymous creators of the culture of Black disadvantage.

Of course, we must not overlook President Trump's role in this sad, pathetic racial farce. 

It is no coincidence Ms. Thomas suffered her break from reality shortly after President Trump issued his *go back where you came from* tweet to four congressional colored women.  Unquestionably Ms. Thomas, as a colored Georgia congresswoman, identified with the objects of Trump's *hate.*  With this added stressor, whether conscious or unconscious, Ms. Thomas was much more susceptible to a psychotic break.  

Thus, the more President Trump singles out colored people for attack, the more hysterical *hate crimes* we will see. . .

Well, that's America, a melting crackpot with few sympathetic figures.  One can only chuckle when trying to imagine, in regard to the rather absurd state of current American racial affairs, what Native Americans must think of all the noise over border *concentration camps* and the juvenile calls for people to *go back where they came from?* 

The Democrats

After watching 2 nights of mostly bland democrat debates, the following can be stated with absolute certainty:

Kamala Harris is another empty bi-racial Flim-Flam pol. . .Obama with a cunt. . .no doubt she could beat Trump. . .and then do nothing for 8 fucking years. All style, no substance. Even that *big moment* with Biden was just pure theatre. . .she begged the moderators to give her a chance to perform her busing soliloquy.

Bernie Sanders could beat Trump, but he'll never get the nomination. . .Sanders is fairly honest (for a politician) but the fake Injun Elizabeth Warren (who Trump would crush) has stolen half his supporters.  All the proof you need to know Warren is a fraud, and would serve as a waterboy for the Elite, is that Media refuses to grill her for lying about her Native American heritage.  Media protects that old bag Warren because Warren will protect the status quo.  She talks a lot of *progressive* mumbo-jumbo but her entire career she's been a tool for bankers and the miliary media complex (proof here, here, here, etc.).  The only changes she would make to America's brutal Absolute Capitalism are cosmetic. . .in the end, she's just a wrinkled old white gal painting her face red.   It's a damn shame this dried-out old cunt is stealing support from Sanders because Bernie still seems sharp as a tack, and very energetic. . .unlike:

Joe Biden. Hahaha!  He's the Weekend At Bernie's candidate. I actually felt sorry for this old fraud (he's Elizabeth Warren with a cock) on the debate stage.  All stammers and frozen stares out from under his cosmetic surgery.  If the democrats actually think he could beat Trump, they are woefully self-deluded.  What could possibly motivate any normal human being to drag his or her ass to the polling place and stand in a slow-moving line to vote for this dusty throwback candidate?  This should be Biden's campaign logo:

Tulsi Gabbard was my personal favorite. Absolutely 100% the best choice to be Commander-in-Chief and run foreign policy, which are really the president's main jobs. Of course, Gabbard is being totally blacked-out by Media (except Tucker Carlson), because she is not a war-monger. Too bad. If you don't want to kill the others and exploit colored labor, *They* will never let you near the White House. If she got anywhere near 10% in the polls, Media would give her the same smearing they gave Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul.

Cory Booker is an inverse Pete Buttigieg. . .a bigger fake than Warren.  What would Booker have thought of his hidden faggot self if they had put him on the same debate stage as the unafraid Buttigieg?

Buttigieg was the most admirable of all, for refusing to bullshit about the white killer cop in his shitty Indiana town.  Black folk who hold that against him are just holding themselves back.  Absolute stupidity to punish decent, honest white folks because they can't cure racism overnight.  So go ahead and vote for another mulatto sell-out and keep working for 10 bucks an hour and gittin' yo ass thrown in jail for drivin witta spended license. . .

Most of the others were total zeroes. . .no personality, no ideas. . .that kOOk Marianne Williamson was far better than those robot politicians.

Sickening to see them all bow before the abortion altar. . .which that AI politician Kirsten Gillibrand labels *reproductive rights*. . .serial killers ought to start demanding their *self-actualization rights.*

Oh, the Asian nerd Andrew Yang had the single best idea with his $1000 a month handout. . .

OK, Now Let's Try Socialism!

This is why increasing numbers of Americans, particularly young Americans, don't wet themselves when FOX News calls democrats *socialists.*  

Who gives a shit about *socialism* if Absolute Capitalism is only good for $6.21 a week?  

Hey, Trump, thanks for the 15 cents an hour raise!!

You have to feel bad for all the brainwashed working class Americans who thought, and still think, Trump *fights* for them.  

Here's who Trump fights for (besides Israel):

Trump's tax bill, with its 21% corporate tax rate, was first and foremost a gift to multinationals. They had wanted cuts in the corporate tax rate for foreign and domestic profits for decades. Everything else flowed from that: the tax cuts for smaller businesses known as “pass-throughs”, which had been their holy grail, and the cuts for individuals, which were needed to sell the bill to voters.

The second: all the posturing about real “reform” of the tax code and “revenue neutrality” for the legislation was meaningless. In fact, the bill had to create a $1.5tn 10-year deficit to pay for its generous tax cuts. Without the deficit, the corporate rate of 21% could never have been achieved and, more important, the bill could not have passed at all.

The third was that the bill as passed was hugely problematic. It contained egregious mistakes, created massive new loopholes and opened the door to new forms of tax avoidance. Thirteen tax law professors from around the country, in a 68-page study, blasted its “rushed and secretive process” that resulted, they said, “in deeply flawed legislation."

HaHa!  Trump fights for *multinationals,* not cashiers, truck drivers, janitors and all the rest of the *deplorables* who think he's making America great again.

I'll never understand why so many millions of white working class American males vote republican.  Are they so afraid of colored people, they'll be slaves for the 1% just for the illusion walls are coming to keep them safe?  

There's never been a bigger bunch of suckers than white working class males, who consistently bend over and take it in the ass from people who wouldn't nod at them if they ever in a one-in-a-million chance happened to cross paths on the same street.  The white working class aren't even house niggers, they don't ever see their Masters!  They live in separate worlds. . .and the working class world is getting more and more run-down. . .pot holes, dirty water, crap schools, shitty health care. . .but white males don't care, just so long as republicans nurse their fear of colored people.  

But the hand-writing is on the wall. . .young people just don't care about the same shit as the white working class. . .the 1% will loot the last pennies they can from the poor, and then the AOCs and the Omars will inherit the earth, and the Euro-style welfare state will be imported to America.  I suppose we'll have to endure more and more domestic terrorism from deranged crybaby vets who thought they were killing colored foreigners to protect the American Way of Life (like Isaiah Peoples) during the change-over, but, as Timothy McVeigh once quoted Thomas Jefferson:

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. . .

It's All About The Benjamins!

CNN, 28 April 2019: During a riff about getting countries around the world to pay more for their own defense, President Trump defended his support for Saudi Arabia.  “They buy a lot from us -- $450 billion they buy,” the President said.  “You have people wanting to cut off Saudi Arabia. They bought $450 billion. I don’t want to lose them!” he told the crowd.

Yeah, why would we want to *cut off* Saudi Arabia?

Saudi Arabia commits war crimes in Yemen, beheads its dissidents, murders journalists, exploits migrant workers, oppresses women.

But "they buy a lot from us!"

This tells us Trump is a soul-less materialist.  Death and misery have a price.  If Houthi children in Yemen are bombed and starved, so what?  If Saudi dissidents are tortured into *confessing* they are faggots and then beheaded, so what?  The Saudis "buy a lot from us!" 

My friend, is this really how we Make America Great Again?  By selling our souls?  

Trump has always been a pitiable and pathetic figure. . .a shameless and insecure blowhard who continually aggrandizes himself.  He's also a boor, a crook, a pervert, a draft-dodger and a habitual liar.  We can feel sorry for Trump, because he's obviously condemned:

For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved. He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

Trump is obviously not a *Christian.*  His life is a flesh-and-blood contradiction of the Sermon on the Mount.

For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

Trump brings forth nothing but corruption. . .

Those who are not pitiable, and those who cannot be felt sorry for are the millions of self-proclaimed *Christians* who support Trump, and especially those who believe supporting Trump is akin to supporting God.

How is someone born again by the Spirit of God not sickened to hear Trump forgive Saudi crimes for an (imaginary) $450 billion?

But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil. . .

We can easily identify Donald Trump with the above scripture. . .surely Trump is a man of many foolish and hurtful lusts, a man drowning in destruction and perdition.

But what of the self-proclaimed *Christians* who stand up for Trump against the gospel?  What is it that they love which is drowning them in destruction and perdition?  I can only suppose they love America, and view it as God's kingdom on earth, much as damned zionists believe Israel is God's kingdom.

Again, the devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto Him, All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.

This is the temptation self-proclaimed *Christians* cannot resist.  They want the kingdoms of the world. . .they want the glory of the here and now.  They have no knowledge of and/or no faith in the Kingdom of God.  They pray in supposed Christian churches for the murders and thefts their troops commit which benefit their kingdom, and imagine themselves doing God service.

There ought to have been a mighty outrage from Christians over Trump's love of Saudi blood money. . .but no.  American Christians don't give a shit at what cost their kingdom comes. . .

Who can we liken Trump and the self-proclaimed American Christians to?  Who can we compare them to?  They are like the filthiest and foulest of the depraved sinners described in Romans 1:

Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

Make America Great Again?  By taking blood money?  Remember how you loved it, remember all the good things you've had at the expense of others when Jesus keeps His word:

Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? and in Thy name have cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.

Selfie-Crucifixion

In an earlier entry titled Escape From America, we discussed the startling rise in America of death due to alcohol, drugs and suicide.  We suggested one reason for the increase in death due to despair is that most Americans spend much of their lives toiling at inconsequential jobs which leave them terminally indebted.  We said:

What's a typical job for an American?

Cashier.

How many millions of Americans stand behind cash registers for over 1/3 of their lives scanning the bar codes of Big Gulps, Marlboro Lights and foot-long hot dogs for a paycheck that keeps them permanently indebted to the *American Way of Life's* organizing economic system?

There are millions of other equally unrewarding forms of labor. . .

I have no idea the percentage of America worker bees who consciously mull the DEPRESSING contradiction: an infinitely vast universe of immense wonder. . .one tiny planet, an invisible speck on the cosmic scale. . .on that invisible dot, the miracle of life. . .the pinnacle of which is human consciousness. . .and this miracle organism drags itself to work, prostitutes itself as a distributor of Breath Mints, exchanging its limited time on this side of the infinite for a system of credits that barely allows it to keep itself fed and sheltered. . .the miracle of life wasted. . .beyond wasted. . .the miracle degraded to an essentially electronically controlled existence. . .human life is financed. . .judged on its ability to make payments. . .six hundred threescore and six is a *credit score* marked in the right hand or forehead.

Here is the living, breathing embodiment of the beleaguered American cashier, the American dying from despair:

The American cashier recorded in this *viral* video is the villain described in a news story which begins thusly:

A Hispanic woman who engaged in conversation with a Bay Area gas station employee after being greeted in Spanish found herself verbally attacked and berated by a second worker who interrupted them to demand she speak English instead. Grecya Moran said she was “in shock” when she posted video footage of the racist employee to Facebook last Thursday, encouraging others to share the three clips “to see all the bad people that exist in this world.” In another post, Moran said the confrontation happened at the Shell Station in San Jose, CA “just because I was talking Spanish to the other cashier, and apparently she did not like that.” Moran, who was holding her 18-month-old son in her arms as she endured the harassment, told ABC 7 she at first attempted to apologize to the employee for speaking Spanish.

“I said, ‘Excuse me, I’m sorry,” Moran said. “‘All she was saying is … she was greeting me in Spanish. ‘How my day’s going.’ And she said, ‘I don’t care, you talk in English because this is America.'”  But this seemed to enrage the worker even more. So Moran started fighting back — and she started filming. “She started saying something about, ‘Trump needs to hurry up and build the wall,'” Moran said. “That’s when I was like, oh my God, she’s being serious,” Moran said. “I just got my phone, started videotaping her.”

LOL!

The Hispanic woman claims the white trash old bag cashier is *bad people.*

Well. . .

Was the white old bag wrong to bitch about the customer speaking Spanish, and then go MAGA mode with the nonsense about Trump's wall?  Sure.  She should have kept her ancient piehole shut and worked her register, then gone home and choked down a Swanson fried chicken dinner with a tumbler of Red Stag while silently pouring out her heart to God, for better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than an house full of sacrifices with strife.

But. . .

The bigger wrong was the Hispanic woman recording the white trash old bag's sin and posting it for all the world to see. . .

This is the Craze of the Smartphony Age: recording the other's sin, and judging them on the Great White Thrones of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. . .

Nobody turns the other cheek.  Instead, the cameras are turned on, and the recorder attempts to crucify him/herself: Look at me on my cross, the innocent victim!

In our case of the Gas-N-Go transgression, the crucifier is a white trash old bag. . .

LOL!

Look at that old bag. . .look at the shopworn face, the lumpy body, listen to the ravaged voice.  It's obvious she's been kicked around all her life.  The typical American punching bag, scraping by for decades, told ad nauseam by the system's propagandists she's living in the *greatest country on earth* and then left to wonder why, if that's true, her life is nothing but such shit she must seek escape in drink and/or drugs and/or forlorn fornication.

This American cash register loser couldn't victimize anybody, yet she finds herself condemned on Social Media as a racist, as *bad people.*

Here's the Hispanic woman who tried to crucify herself:

Victim?

LOL!

The Hispanic woman's pain is miniscule compared to the lifetime of pain the white trash old bag has suffered.  Have some respect for elders.  The old bag cashier has been kicked around for 30-40 more years.  Eaten shit for 30-40 more years.  She don't like Hispanics and their Spanish?  So what?  Accept it.  Shake the dust off your feet and move on down the street to the next mini-mart.  The truth is, the Hispanic woman don't have the right to be offended.

There is no knowledge today of our common plight.  All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.  We sin against this sinner, and that sinner sins against us, and we all pinball through life sinning against each other and God.  We are not victims, we are victimizers victimizing each other.

Jesus was the only true victim.  Jesus was the only one offended.  Yet when He was on the cross, He said: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

The Hispanic woman couldn't recognize herself in the human wreck before her lamenting her lifetime of pain and poverty.  All she could see was an opportunity for Selfie-Crucifixion on Social Media.  She could not love her supposed enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye?

In posing herself on the cross of Facebook, what reward does the Hispanic woman have?  She has the praise of Social Media.  Doubtless she enjoys it now.  But her reward has no eternal value.  While she revels in the attention of her *viral* video, the unheard Word of God nevertheless remains in effect:

For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

They Work For The Wrong God

The Daily Caller, 16 March 2019: Former Amazon employee Shannon Allen claimed in a Thursday interview with Tucker Carlson that the stressful workplace conditions nearly drove her to suicide.

I'm sure republicans with soft jobs will dismiss, and laugh at, this woman's claims.  After all, she looks fairly well-fed, and it appears she's had time recently to visit hair and nail salons (and, perhaps, a tattoo parlor or two).  Doubtless workers in Asian plants have it much tougher. . .there are genuine *suicide nets* at Foxxconn factories. . .so far, cue ball Jeff Bezos hasn't had to smudge his bottom line with expenditures for those kind of *safety features.*

I'm sure republicans with soft jobs would tell this woman to quit crying, go back to college and get a good job. . .after all, in America opportunities are limitless, anyone can grow up to be President (except a dwarf. . .I'd be willing to bet cash dollars a dwarf will never be President of the United States).

I don't know how horrible Amazon picking jobs are.  Are they worse than picking fruit or cotton?  I don't know.  I can understand that standing at a conveyor belt stuffing cardboard boxes with trinkets could be depressing—if work is meant to be life's fulfillment.

That's the real issue. . .

Tens of millions of working-age Americans report depression. . .whether they work at Amazon or not.  And even more take depression or anxiety meds, so that means tens of millions of additional Americans just self-medicate without a diagnosis. 

Vast numbers of Americans just don't feel very well, psychologically. 

The problem with life in America? Life is defined by work.  Let's admit the truth: Americans are groomed from at least the moment they enter kindergarten (if not before) that life is about getting into a *good* college and then getting a *good* job.  Absolute Capitalism demands a workforce of material beings who submit to the idea of leading a *productive* life of producing profits for the small handful who own the world.     

If life is defined by work, then yes, we have no doubt workers are depressed, and often suicidal, whether they work at Amazon or Facebook or wherever. 

Human beings were designed to be reproductive, not *productive.*  Human beings were designed to be fruitful. . .the product they were to produce was life. . .they were designed to reflect their Creator and populate the earth as the Kingdom of God. 

A life spent producing material to fill landfills is a misspent life. . .it ought to be depressing.

Republicans with soft jobs who would offer no sympathy to the Amazon worker, are, by-and-large, self-proclaimed Christians.  They have more treasure than the Amazon line worker.  Their treasure deceives them.  They believe their treasure is a *blessing* from God, and the poor suicidal Amazon line worker just doesn't have enough *faith.*  Their life is even more depressing, for they are even further from God.  When these people encounter the real Jesus and the real Gospel, this is the result.

When Jesus saw the crowds, He felt sorry for them.  They were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. . .

I'm sorry, but most people have wasted their life working.  They worked for nothing of any eternal value.  They are sad, anxious, constantly taking thought for tomorrow, always fretting how they will feed or clothe themselves. . .they work for the wrong god.

[I find Tucker Carlson less offensive than the other talking heads, but his smirk at the Amazon worker's mention of the World Socialist Web Site was, perhaps, a moment when the mask slips. . .]

Escape From America

USA Today, 5 March 2019: The number of deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide in 2017 hit the highest level since federal data collection started in 1999, according to an analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data by two public health nonprofits. The national rate for deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide rose from 43.9 to 46.6 deaths per 100,000 people in 2017, a 6 percent increase, the Trust for America's Health and the Well Being Trust reported Tuesday.  Deaths from suicides rose from 13.9 to 14.5 deaths per 100,000, a 4 percent increase. That was double the average annual pace over the previous decade.

MAGA, apparently, isn't working. . .

America isn't great.  

In fact, it's such a miserable place, one out of every 15 or 20 Americans (depending on up-to-date population numbers) is addicted to an intoxicated or narcotized state.

Healthy people can use alcohol or narcotics on occasion in a celebratory fashion. . .partying, it is called.  But when a person becomes addicted to the intoxicated or narcotized state, when the alcohol or opioids or whatever becomes the person's life, then that person is no longer healthy.  This is one out of every 15 or 20 Americans.

A person chooses to live intoxicated or narcotized for one reason: the un-intoxicated or un-narcotized life was not sufficient.  Intoxicants and narcotics are used for escape.  Thus we can say one out of every 15 or 20 Americans found the *American Way of Life* insufficient, and sought escape in a liquor or pill bottle or a syringe.

We can also state an additional x number of other Americans are equally disillusioned with the *American Way of Life* and desire to escape it through intoxication or narcotization, yet refrain from doing so because of some form of guilt (family obligations, religion, for example).  These are the *white knuckler* Americans who through sheer force of will endure the *American Way of Life.* This x number of Americans are the *12 Step Program* addicts and others who, on their own, simply grit their teeth and endure the *American Way of Life.*  How many millions are this?

And there may be a further x number of other Americans equally disillusioned with the *American Way of Life* who desire to escape it through less life-threatening addictions, such as gambling, pornography/fornication, video gaming, eating, shopping, body modifying and countless other past times.  Yet some of these may be considered hallmarks of the *American Way of Life,* so that we could say the addicted of these are seeking to escape the *American Way of Life* through the *American Way of Life* in an American Spiral of Misery. . .

In any event, we can say tens upon tens of millions of Americans, if not hundreds of millions of Americans, find the *American Way of Life* so miserable, their existence has become nothing but a mania.

Why?  What do tens of millions of Americans find so miserable about the *American Way of Life* that they run to life-threatening addictions (or just go ahead and kill themselves)?

We answer that question by asking another question: what is there in the *American Way of Life* to live for?

The *American Way of Life* is organized by two dominant systems:

FINANCE CAPITALISM: As a result of original sin, man was left to sweat for a living.  But though labor was meant to be hard, it was never meant to be soul-crushing, as it has become ever since man *civilized* (meaning to turn against God).  Civilization has only meant bondage for the vast majority.  Today's Western worker's bondage comes in the form of debt slavery.  The masses toil in jobs that have no existential meaning for a paycheck that allows them to borrow money to *makes end meet*. . .perpetually in debt, almost all of their adult lives are consigned to scraping for a paycheck. . .most bounce from job to job, forced to work for numbskulls who got loans large enough to start their idiotic businesses. . .tiny fish working for small fish, both of them eaten up by finance capitalism, which is the variation of the ancient system of civilization, by which 99% of sinners work so 1% of sinners can live as if blessed by God.

We know that this soul-crushing system of debt slavery was never God's intention from a study of His economy as outlined in Leviticus 25 and explained in fair detail here. 

Let's say the average American sleeps 8 hours a day. . .therefore he/she is awake 112 hours a week, of which 40 is spent working. . .meaning more than 1/3 of the average American's waking life is given to labor.

What's a typical job for an American?

Cashier.

How many millions of Americans stand behind cash registers for over 1/3 of their lives scanning the bar codes of Big Gulps, Marlboro Lights and foot-long hot dogs for a paycheck that keeps them permanently indebted to the *American Way of Life's* organizing economic system?

There are millions of other equally unrewarding forms of labor. . .

I have no idea the percentage of America worker bees who consciously mull the DEPRESSING contradiction: an infinitely vast universe of immense wonder. . .one tiny planet, an invisible speck on the cosmic scale. . .on that invisible dot, the miracle of life. . .the pinnacle of which is human consciousness. . .and this miracle organism drags itself to work, prostitutes itself as a distributor of Breath Mints, exchanging its limited time on this side of the infinite for a system of credits that barely allows it to keep itself fed and sheltered. . .the miracle of life wasted. . .beyond wasted. . .the miracle degraded to an essentially electronically controlled existence. . .human life is financed. . .judged on its ability to make payments. . .six hundred threescore and six is a *credit score* marked in the right hand or forehead. 

It appears most worker bees have little conscious awareness of their true condition, of the absolute waste of their lives.  If there were awareness, they could not sit placidly in front of their flat screens watching The Masked Singer.  BUT we must insist upon the unconscious awareness.  Buried deep within the lifewreck is the soul, and the unconscious awareness of the soul's utter degradation must be a generator of the worker bee's flight to intoxication and narcotization.

DIMINISHMENT CULTURE: Original labor was never meant to bring mankind into bondage, but as a means to make offerings to God, as an early shadow of the Cross on the long road to Redemption.  The human family was meant to spread across the earth as the terrestrial image of the heavenly—this was the original culture, culture being the nearly two-thirds of our waking lives not spent in labor.  But beginning with Cain's murder of Abel, and continuing with the Nimrod-led planetary rebellion in the land of Shinar, and on down through the ages, the herd of men have always followed bent leaders on the path of diminishment culture.  God's culture diminishes, and man's increasingly bizarre culture increases.  The human family as God's people laboring on earth awaiting its redemption and its fulfillment as the image of the heavenly gradually becomes eliminated over the generations until we have the neurotic hash of the present age, where not only has sight of God been lost, but even the individual identities of the herd have been lost, such that the sheeple do not even know whether they are male or female.  The confusion and anxiety resulting from the loss of purpose and identity is the rotten fruit of the diminishment culture, making it the second organizing system which produces the misery leading the herd to seek escape through intoxication or narcotization.

We began by questioning what it was in the *American Way of Life* that produced such distress, but, in fairness, is it not the case that it is the *Way of Life* in general?  The Global Way of Life?  If not entirely Global, then certainly it is the predominant mode of living in the ironically named *developed countries.*  Is America any different than any other *developed country?*  Certainly there is nothing in the rates of death by alcohol, drugs and suicide that mark America as a glaring outlier.  Russia has a far higher suicide rate, Italy's is much lower.  

The only area in which America is a true outlier from other *developed countries* is in its homicidal violence, both individual and collective.  America's murder rate is much higher than the *developed countries* of Asia and Europe, and is even higher than Africa's Somalia, which is described as a *failed state.*  And collectively, America has been at war in 226 of its 243 years of existence.

But let us not stray from the path of the suicidal into the homicidal.  Let us suggest that the *American Way of Life* really isn't all that different from the *Way of Life.*  Generally speaking, large percentages of human beings seek escape.

Where can the herd go?

Off a cliff and into the sea?  

Unfortunately, they have nowhere outside themselves to go.  The only alternative is to pollute the mind with intoxicants, narcotics, pornography, etc. and float away in innerspace in a chemically induced state of bliss. . .and then suffer the always-accompanying crash to an increasingly depressing reality. . .

Well. . .

But. . .

Hasn't it always been so?

Is our contemporary *Way of Life* any worse than it's ever been?  The manias and obsessions may be more bizarre, but isn't misery, in the end, just misery?

2500 years ago the Preacher looked around and saw nothing but vexation of spirit. 

And it had been that way forever then, and it remains that way forever now:

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

Man struggles though life, then he dies. . .

For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

Even the modern secular preacher agrees:

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. . .

Is there way a to beat the system, other than self-harming escape?

We know of one (there may be unknown others, but if there are, they probably follow a similar path): to live in this life as an outsider, as a stranger and pilgrim, as one not seeking a home here, but one to return to.  To exist in two realities simultaneously.  To exist here as sojourner from the Kingdom that already is and the Kingdom that will come.

And when He was demanded of the Pharisees, when the Kingdom of God should come, He answered them and said, The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.

One must see oneself in this world as a servant sent to show the way out of this present darkness into the light of the Kingdom to come:

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light. . .

If one lives this peculiar life, then one is not jailed in this world's misery, but is a liberator of the miserable. . .that is the Way.