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Better Choices than Woke Cult vs. Trump Cult?

August 31, 2023 by tornado Leave a Comment

I have many friends, associates and colleagues whose relationships I value, and who also voted for Trump. I do not think less of any of them for it; in fact I respect and even agree with a lot of their reasoning. It’s also well-known that I did not and will not vote for him, ever, in any primary nor general election.

Mainly it’s his wanton selfishness, disturbing level of impulsiveness, intellectual vacuity, utter absence of statesmanlike dignity, demonstrated dishonesty, and shameless personal immorality—all of which together made and make him utterly unvotable to me. Even if (being very generous here) 90% of the crimes of which he is accused are completely bogus, the balance, combined with his historic moral and ethical problems, still leaves him wholly unsuitable in personal character to return to this nation’s highest office. I have a moral litmus test and he fails it, period. “Bigly!” [BTW, the same goes for the overwhelming majority of Democrats, including all D candidates on any of my ballots since 1990. I have voted for other Rs, as well as Ls and Is. Modern Ds have swung so radically far left that the very idea of their influence in powerful positions is thoroughly repugnant…and dangerous.]

I mean this in a concerned and caring way, not a derisive one, regarding my Trump-supporting friends, whom I value as God’s children and whose overall worldviews I otherwise relate to, strongly. What if you’re being played…by Trump and by the system, as a means to the end on a larger-scale game of divide and conquer? Please read this Twitter link carefully, stop for a few moments, and give it thought. If you do, you may see how he has betrayed all of us who care about liberty, fiscal responsibility, and personal moral bearing, in several ways (whether or not we voted for him).

What if Trump himself is controlled opposition? Dare I even ask? Is that too radical a concept to even consider? I am not positing any particular “conspiracy theory”, whatsoever, period. Instead I am asking questions, and posting questions and suggestions from others that are worth giving some thought.

Just as with the “woke justice” social-conformity cult on the opposite part of the spectrum, whose derangements I see infecting a lot of otherwise brilliant minds, what easily could be considered the personality cult of Trumpism has used legitimate (and legitimate-sounding) grievances to ensnare many, and appears to have blinded them to the internal inconsistencies, double standards, un-Christ-like behaviors, and direct deviances from the values we liberty-cherishing Christian conservatives share.

And if you still vote for him in the primary anyway, I will not insult you nor think less of you as a person. I might scratch or shake my head, however.
Here is the link again. Read thoughtfully.

Filed Under: Not weather Tagged With: Christian ethics, conservatism, conservatives, Donald Trump, ethics, immorality, liberty, morality, morals, politicians, politics, social justice, woke cult

Scattershooting 201124

November 24, 2020 by tornado Leave a Comment

Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to pro-life, strong-military, low-tax Democrats…like John F. Kennedy!
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TOP-10 STORM-OBSERVING PHOTOS from 2020
I’ve posted my top-10 in 2020 storm-intercept photos page a little early this year, and also, added links to each of the other years going back to 2010. Enjoy this journey through ten amazing skyscapes!
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UTERINE TRANSPLANTS? I didn’t even know uterine transplantation existed, much less is being done in East Dallas a couple miles from my old neighborhood. A marvel of modern medical science, the process only will get safer and smoother with time. Still, this seems an extreme measure for childless couples. If you want to plunk down a big bag of Jacksons to get a baby that’s genetically yours, that’s your call. I won’t deny your freedom to do so, but I also have the free-speech right to question it. I advocate for adoption instead, even knowing (through experiences of colleagues) how difficult it can be bureaucratically.

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CHUMP EFFECT: No, this has nothing to do with “Two Chumps” storm chasing. Instead, please take 10-15 minutes to indulge this long but worthwhile essay on the “Chump Effect” and why real, legitimate backlashes happen to “social justice”-justified injustices.
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VIRAL HYPOCRISY in the BOURGEOIS ELITE: Between California’s hypocritical governor at his fancy restaurant, and state legislators with their Hawaii junket, it’s all “Rules for thee, not for me.” But of course, that’s long been the case in politics. The hoity-toitys in the connected class are too important to abide by the rules they want to impose on us mere proletariat.

Let us eat cake! I’ve said it before and stand 100% by this: the virus is not partisan, and does not care about the purpose of the gatherings of its hosts. Also, masks are good for slowing spread, but as note below, not absolutely foolproof. The more people together (regardless of reason!), the riskier. That’s just scientifically based reality. Virology and immunology are what matter, not anyone’s opinion.

Conferences largely have been canceled, and will be until disease spread, some pre-existing coronaviral immunity a minority of people already have, and vaccines (which are coming and surprisingly effective in trails so far!) combine to bring about herd immunity. This conference was arrogant, ignorant and stupid. Even if nobody catches or spreads the illness from it, I stand resolutely by that statement. Those Who Are Above You are not learning lessons from both what medical science now knows about the Wuhan coronavirus, and what happened with the Rose Garden super-spreader event at the White House.
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HARMFUL BITTERNESS over ELECTION OUTCOME: I’ll have more to say about the outcome of the 2020 national election and the impacts of the Trump presidency once the final popular and electoral vote tallies are known. Getting the facts precisely and literally correct absolutely matters. Until then, and to the extent we can know the truth, it appears that the Biden/Harris (or for the sake of reality in the face of his obvious cognitive enfeeblement, Harris/Biden) won the executive election, while Democrats unexpectedly lost House seats and gained fewer in the Senate than anticipated (also pending Georgia). Nonetheless, some are very, very bitter.

I understand why and how she got there. Her attitude toward voting sounds like some friends regarding OU football after a particularly ugly loss. Still, reasoned and reasonable people, independent thinkers, must consider the long game. The more people like her throw in the towel, the more the acceleration into totalitarian collectivism will proceed apace. These are the fruits of the two-party duopoly, as are the lack of better options on the ballot. To every lash there is a backlash, however. And believe me, there will be one to Harris/Biden, both in the 2022 midterms and in the future. The left will overplay their hand. They always do, because they have no self-restraint. Watch. She may wish to participate in that backlash, in the voting booth, once she calms down.

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CORONAVIRUS MASK USE and SEX ABSTINENCE: The following is indisputable, objective fact. Pregnancy and venereal disease can be avoided by abstaining from sex. Period. This is irrefutable. For strict logical consistency, those promoting abstinence from sex for disease safety (and avoiding pregnancy) should be promoting abstinence from people to avoid the Wuhan virus too. I promote both kinds of abstinence. In both cases, the best option from a factual standpoint (and objective facts are what matter) is avoiding the risky behavior. Stay away from people the best you can until you either have had the disease, or a shot for it.

I recognize it’s harder with the Wuhan virus, because it’s airborne, highly contagious, and you don’t have to contact somebody’s genitals to get it. Masks are loosely analogous to condoms (but far leakier). Yet when you can’t avoid crowded public places, especially indoors, they absolutely are better than nothing, both for slowing transmission and reception of the airborne virus, but are far from foolproof. At least with consensual sex, that’s 100% a chosen and optional behavior, self-controlled (though people still fail to exercise said self control). So we still see venereal diseases spread. With avoiding contagious airborne viruses, it’s harder, because a lot of folks aren’t in a position to avoid being around others. Ultimately it’s about choosing to do the best we reasonably can to minimize spread, knowing there’s still risk of catching the virus anyway.
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“WOKE” LEFTISM as a MARKER of PRIVILEGE and ELITISM: Elitist, privileged, soft, sheltered, pampered little “woke” students have been, are, and are going to, get many millions of dollars in student loans covered by the taxpayers for this inane horseshit. A mind is a terrible thing to waste…on “social justice” propaganda.

Filed Under: Scattershooting Tagged With: coronavirus, election, election results, hypocrisy, Joseph Biden, Kamala HArris, leftist hypocrisy, leftists, morals, photography, storm observing, uterine transplants

Musings on JFK, 22 November

November 22, 2020 by tornado Leave a Comment

Realizing, to my own surprise, that I’ve never said much on this medium about John F. Kennedy and his legacy, this date serves as a good reminder to make note of that era. I can’t do so in any way that would do full justice — that would take hundreds of pages of writings — but here’s a summary, for posterity’s sake as much as anything.

22 November 1963: 57 years ago this afternoon, my dad was on a hotel balcony downtown, watching the motorcade. He heard (but didn’t see) the moment of the shots, since he was around the corner and a few blocks away on Commerce St. The motorcade was struck by bullets on Elm, a few dozen feet west of Houston St. He recognized immediately those were rifle shots echoing through the urban canyon, and dreaded hearing the news he immediately suspected was unfolding, even before sirens began to wail. It only took a few minutes for word the President had been hit by a shot to spread to his portion of the crowd.

My mom, who he wouldn’t meet until a few years later, was still living in Houston, raising children from her deteriorating first marriage. She saw this awful news unfold in her childhood home city on TV broadcasts. For her, it was a time of deepening turmoil and inner darkness of her own — a life rapidly emptying of joy outside those kids. This didn’t help. Even though she voted reliably Republican her whole long adult life, she admired Kennedy, and told me she would have voted for him in ’64. [She knew a lot about LBJ and his underhanded shenanigans in Texas, rightly didn’t trust him, and very reluctantly pulled the lever for Goldwater.]

Being born five floors above and several years after where JFK was declared dead, then growing up in Dallas in the decades following, I learned a lot almost by effortless osmosis about Kennedy the man and the president, as well as the murders of him and Oswald. Too much, really…the word-of-mouth and self-published conspiracy theories drifted on the air like contagious viruses, almost endless in their creative untruth. At times the utterances, from sources like, “heard it from a friend of Ruby” to “cousin Clem worked in the Depository” to “my buddy was a DPD detective and he said there’s no way…”, and so forth, make Infowars-style fringe stuff you now see online now seem lame by comparison.

Every 22 November, and really, many days before and after, offered another yearly lesson in newspapers and on TV. It was an informational dump truck of known facts, analyses and remembrances, most of it recycled, banal and unoriginal, unloaded amidst the continual dribble of conspiratorial innuendo available year-round. The November barrage was at once tedious, tiresome, somewhat dreaded, yet somehow infused annually with fascinating nuggets of new insight, in the sea of regurgitated remembrances. Interesting discoveries and legitimate new ideas would pop out from time to time, much as one might see a large mass of drab metamorphic rock containing an occasional glistening garnet or flake of gold.

Anyone paying half a measure of attention in Dallas during those times couldn’t help but swim in everything known about Kennedy, plus all the rumor and concocted bullcrap. Aggregated over a couple decades, it was hard not to learn a good deal about JFK and related events in that setting, especially for a very news-thirsty kid interested in issues. As I said, this could take hundreds of pages, with all the rabbit holes one could follow. The most simultaneously controversial and boring one — the Warren Commission report — still seems closest to truth, all these decades later.

In office, the reality of JFK’s life, the affairs, scandal, coverups, and medical problems, was no match for the Utopian image of Camelot that he and his family encouraged via a highly compliant and complicit press. So much of it was a big, fat lie, a cover-up the media were knowingly perpetuating. And yet…the inspiration both Camelot and his speeches offered was necessary and vital to a nation standing fearful under a thousand Swords of Damocles in the form of Soviet nuclear missiles. Even born of deflection and a lack of openness, they served a good, noble purpose.

A man whose difference between image and reality was as vast as any President’s could be, JFK regardless articulated with eloquentce and vivid clarity, a powerful and clear vision for America to reach greater heights. He set a standard for Presidential inspiration of the People through great speeches, sometimes backed up by deeds, that none since but Reagan has attained. His courage in setting a hard line on Khrushchev in Cuba stands as one of the ballsiest acts by a leader in world history. He started the Peace Corps, which has done great deeds for the impoverished and embattled overseas, and for the lives of youth who have gone over to serve them.

To be fair, evaluating his short but extremely eventful Presidency must include the failures, including but not limited to the short-fused debacle of Bay of Pigs, and for longer-term impact, ratcheting up involvement in Vietnam that haunts this nation to this very day. Coming from well-to-do families, the First Couple were about as gracious as could be publicly, but they couldn’t help it: in many blue-collar eyes, the Kennedys nonetheless oozed a nontrivial, passive-aggressive element of elitist snobbery, marinated in the bubbling cauldron of longstanding blue-collar resentments toward the upper crust. This was a common denominator in many (by then) middle-aged to old adults I knew who did not like JFK at all.

In his frequent use of Christian themes and Biblical verses in speeches, I believe JFK was being genuine, not consciously hypocritical, despite the despicable and inexcusable way he treated Jackie. Most people who attain that level of power have great capacity for compartmentalization, none more than JFK. To deal with some of the massive issues of the day and not go certifiably insane, one would need such an inner circuit switch. Too bad his legacy forever will be tarnished by misusing that powerful ability, for the purpose of turning off the Catholic marital morals of his upbringing for dalliances with Marylin Monroe, Judith Exner, Mimi Alford, and likely others.

But JFK was also a pragmatic and effective leader, notwithstanding the patently absurd facade of Camelot. He advocated for lower taxes to help the economy, businesses and workers, championed a strong military (being a WW2 vet himself, then in the darkest depths of the Cold War), NASA and other sci-tech support, deficit control, encouraged the arts, worked against racial discrimination, cited and encouraged faith many times in his speeches, despite his own many sins. These acts bettered the nation and engendered much-needed goodwill across party and class lines.

It’s hard to imagine that combination of governance positions today from any President of either major party. Issues-wise, it’s a winning formula, and for the lack of it, we’ve deteriorated this century. Were a president of either party to run on the exact platform he laid out (adapted to today’s issues of course), I’d vote for that, despite minor misgivings about the viability of some elements.

Instead, each party lacks half of what’s needed to take this nation forward. Can you imagine, for example, a low-tax, pro-life, pro-military Democrat citing the Bible, directly or indirectly, in most speeches? Join the club; I can’t either.

For all his many then-hidden demons, and Vietnam notwithstanding, I’d call Kennedy’s densely complicated presidency a net positive for the country. In today’s extremely polzarized cancel culture, however, I suspect JFK would be torched with no mercy from his left flank, and Eisenhower from the right. [Nixon and LBJ, by contrast, each had somewhat Trumpian mean and vindictive streaks a mile long, and likewise would be the type to egg it on for his own benefit, unfortunately.]

On a societal and individual level, too many have lost sight of, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Instead it’s all about what the country must do for me, me, me.

The only way to dial down or dilute this hyper-polarization, and to invite a sense of compromise back into the fold, seems to be one or two viable third parties. This is to reduce both the numeric and auditory volume of the Rs and Ds to levels more amenable to public accountability, requiring coalition governance more akin to Israel or some multiparty European states that forces a measure of cooperation for the sake of the republic’s survival. That isn’t extreme, in light of how the duopoly as it now stands is driving us slowly off a cliff.

Filed Under: Not weather Tagged With: adultery, Dallas, ethics, foreign policy, history, John F. Kennedy, morals, political parties, politics, sociopolitics

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