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.

Oh? Peace in Korea is Tougher than Building a Golf Course in Scotland??

Daily Mail, 28 February 2019: North Korean officials made a rare appearance on Thursday after President Trump departed Vietnam to publicly dispute aspects of his claims about the breakdown in talks. Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho said the country asked for 'partial sanctions' relief, primarily in the areas harming North Korean citizens and affecting their livelihoods. In return, Pyongyang offered to 'permanently' close its Plutonium and Uranium facilities in the Yongbyon region in the presence of U.S. inspectors.

He said North Korea asked the U.S. to lift sanctions corresponding with five United Nations resolutions adopted between 2016 and 2017. Ri claimed that his proposal was the 'biggest' offer North Korea could make based on the 'current level of confidence' between the country and the United States. Trump said that North Korea was 'not ready' to meet the United States' conditions. Ri said talks broke down when the United States 'insisted that we should take one more step' beyond the pledge to abandon Yongbyon, 'therefore it became crystal clear that the United States was not ready to accept our proposal.'

The U.S. president expressed confidence that an accord could be struck in the future that would see North Korea denuclearize, but Ri told reporters an opportunity to make a better agreement may not present itself: 'Our principle stand will remain variably and our proposal will never be changed.'

So the *Nuclear Summit* failed. . .

What a suprise!

NOT!

Not a surprise that a country that has been in wars 226 of its 243 years of existence fails at peace. . .

Given America's aggressive expression of its self-deluded *Manifest Destiny,* and its unending and unbending adherence to a Military Finance Economy, it becomes all the more remarkable, in hindsight, that the otherwise undistinguished President Barack Obama managed to negotiate a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran.

Of course, the Plan of Action didn't even last three years, as Obama's incredibly ridiculous successor, the New York slumlord Donald Trump, quit the plan because. . .it wasn't his plan.  Obama's plan was bad because it was Obama's and Obama wasn't the brilliant deal-maker that the slumlord Trump was.  Trump's entire campaign was based on the self-aggrandizement that he was smarter than everybody else and that Mexicans were *bad hombres.*  Amazingly, this thin and imbecilic platform was enough to convince the American people to give Trump the keys to the White House!

Upon taking office, Trump embarked upon his futile pursuit of a wall to protect America from any Mexican not willing to work under the table at one his of construction sites and undoing Obama's few political achievements.

Trump was so stupid, he actually believed after continuously slandering the Iranians for two-and-a-half years and then quitting the Iran Plan, he could slap a few more sanctions on them and force them to accept a new deal. 

DumbDumbDumb. 

Even dumber, Trump didn't realize that by not honoring Obama's Iran Plan, he was making it harder for himself to be taken as a trustworthy partner.

Dumber still, Trump didn't realize that holding a Summit with North Korea while simultaneously trying topple the Venezuelan government would make it nearly impossible for the North Koreans, or anyone else, to take him in good faith.

Trump's *policies* have been complete failures: the retarded trade war with China, the bumbling travel ban on Muslim nations, the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, the Israel-First decisions on UNESCO and Jerusalem, the enabling of the Saudi disaster in Yemen, changing his word every five minutes on troop withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, and worst of all, pulling out of the INF treaty and starting a new arms race with Russia, a nation that should be a US ally (which Trump-the-candidate knew, but Trump-the-President forgot [or was ordered to forget by some Hidden Hand]).  

@@While it is certainly preferable the US have peaceful, friendly relations with all countries, doesn't it seem *odd,* given the ethnic and religious demographics of the countries, that Saudia Arabia, Pakistan, Israel are US allies, and Russia is not?@@

Trump's idiotic *policies* are isolating the US from Europe and increasing tensions around the globe.  In fact, Trump's *policies* are so amateurish, stupid and ineffective, the only natural reaction is the one given to him by world leaders:

Yes, Donald Trump is a laughingstock. . .

So slumlord Donald Trump's North Korea Summit failed. . .

The North Koreans would have to have been as dumb as Donald Trump to give up their nuclear weapons program. . .and they aren't that dumb.  The key statement made by the North Koreans is that their limited proposal was the best they could make given their current level of confidence in the United States. 

Given the United States failures to fulfill their Treaties and obligations, given the United States' addiction to *regime changes* that serve its *Manifest Destiny* and Military Finance Economy, and given Donald Trump's double mind, the North Koreans simply can't trust the United States.

No deal.

The North Koreans will keep their nukes until the United States has established itself as an honest peace partner.  And given the US history in Korea, the firebombing of nearly the entire North (a fact conveniently forgotten in the US but painfully remembered by Koreans), this was always going to be a difficult proposition.  Add to that the US record of promises made to and then broken with Muammar Gaddafhi and Saddam Hussein, the catastrophic regime change disaster wreaked upon former Gulf War ally Syria, and the US' habitual meddling into other countries affairs, reaching an agreement to denuclearize North Korea was far, far beyond the extremely limited abilities of a blowharding clown like Donald Trump, who would have the American people believe negotiating a golf course deal in Scotland was ample preparation for the job of World Statesman.

Ha!

The American people may be stupid, but by saying no to Trump's dumb proposal, the North Koreans have proven they are not.

And one can only imagine what stupidity the moron Trump will inflict upon his friends, family and country to soothe the North Korean blow to his gargantuan *Master Deal Maker* ego!!