It is said that the one thing Satan can't synthesize, but wishes that he could, is courage. That's an interesting thought to meditate on. It is said that courage tests what men and women are really made of. We know when something is "The Real Thing". I was going to download a big photograph of Robert Kennedy to feature in this posting. He showed courage because he ran for President even after his brother was assasenated. He also showed courage in that he didn't back down from campaigning even after Martin Luther King was gunned down. History might be very different today had Robert Francis Kennedy survived. It is said that counterfeiters are successful because people are expecting the real thing and not getting it. If the Real Thing were not valuable, there would not be so many counterfeiters. In the recovery of "The Scream" painting yesterday, the criminals knew they had The Real Thing, but of course they were unable to sell it because of all the computer data banks. In Christianity there is the parable of the wheat and the tares, or as I say in my book, the wheat and the darnel grass. Now, there is nothing wrong with being darnel grass, so long as you don't try to pass yourself as wheat. I think if there is a distinction between the real and the fake among Christians, it's along the dividing line of Courage, ie. who has it and who doesn't. I have often said that the two biggest vices of modern Christianity is that they are cowards and hypocrits. Scripture tells us in the last day that it's the fakes who will be "taken" first. Scripture says "Wherever the corpse is there vultures will be gathered". People talk about the Rapture as being the be all and end all of Christian faith. And yet it's dawned on me that the reason why they cling to what well may be a falst doctrine (and a tracable Adventist offshoot hericy) is that these people are "Frightened of the Real World". They can't face it and they want to get away from it. It's funny when you listen to Christian music they are Johnny come latelys. I remember when I first heard my first disco Christian song. What a shock. That was in 1980. I heard my first "Christian punk" in early 1983. Now they have Christian rap. It seems as if Christianity is always playing the "me, too" game. They're always a follower and never a leader, like Abraham, Martin, John and Bobby were leaders.
I supposed if I were to venture who deserves the hottest places in hell and the least deserving of any mercy or appeal or even a hearing, it would be these people, and usually parents, who murder their children and then kill themselves. This is what I would call an extreme form of cowardice. Those kids have their young lives cut short and they get no hearing or appeal. Why should their parents get any? I suppose it would be a tad less hot for Andria Yates. At least she didn't try to kill herself after offing her five innocent children. At least she stayed around to face justice, such as it was. I don't know what goes on in the minds of these psycho parents, often estranged divorcees, who kidnap and then murder their kids and take their own life.
Ed Schultz is about the only host who is still on KTLK these days. The guy who replaced Al Frankin was a complete asshole, and I tuned in Rush Limbaugh to get away from him. This whole air traffic controler crisis has been going on, I suppose since the firing of air traffic controlers by Ronald Reagan in 1981. If Ed Schultz is right by the year 2010 75 % of the air traffic controlers on the job 25 years ago will have retired, and the thing is they are not being replaced. It seems in Philadelphia the union there had some terms crammed down their throat they really didn't feel confortable with. Now they have to work extra overtime, and under conditions of extreme fatigue. Excuses that used to be acceptable won't be any more. They are endangering the welfare of passengers, such as happened last week. We will be seeing a rise in "incidents" where controler error is to blame. There have been a lot of near misses in the skies over our airports lately. It was only a matter of time before the chickens came home to roost. So why do people agree to terms they are ethically opposed to? Why do certain construction firms agree to a cheaper grade of cable or steel in a project than was agree to, and may not even be legal but they do it anyhow? Strange as it seems it seems to be Fear. Fear of their superiors looking over their shoulder and wagging their fingers. They would rather endanger humdreds of lives than look their superiors in the eyes and tell them they're wrong. Now we hear the goal of the Bush adminestration is to privatize the whole industry. Perhaps if the Bush bragades can generate a sever enough manpower shortage- - somehow the solution will be to privitize, and give the account to Haloburten or some other corporation where the Bush people can make a nice profit.
There is a fictional case on a soap opera that merits looking at. There was a guy named Ethan who needed a job and his wife was leaning on him to get some mulah into the account. Suddenly a plumb case drops into his lap. There is a guy who was ripped off by the Crane Empire because of a pattened invention that was stolen by the Crane Empire and the guy wanted justice. Ethan turned him down. The reason given was that "Oh innocent workers may get fired if the case is successful and I can't be responsable for that". First of all he doesn't know that. He doesn't know if he will win the case, or if another attorney got it he'd win. But most importantly, if a worker sings up to work for an evil man like Allester Crane, they pretty much are taking a moral risk. The right has a point. Sometimes things happen. Corporations do go bankrupt. People skip town without paying their workers. If you go to work for a crook that's what you can expect. But all the man who brought the case to Ethan wanted was justice and Ethan was an attorney. But there is another cowardess factor working with Ethan. First of all Allester when he was alive used that excuse, "If you put me out of business millions of workers around the world will suffer". I doubt it. But Ethan was afraid of losing the love of Teresa, a woman he's had a lust problem with for years. Ethan let cowardess and his hormones get in the way of a rightious judgement. But you know- - God himself had a moral lapse in the Bible when Satan came to him and began making demands on him concerning his treatment of Job. And God decided even though he knew he should do the right thing, he really didn't want to offend Satan, only Lord knows why. Literally. Rather than offend Satan, God decided it would be better to allow evil to take place. If we could put an Ethan mask on God and a Teresa mask on Satan- - - well.
There is another case from the same soap opera. Why do criminals like to kill people for the hell of it rather than let innocent live. I guess robers are becomming more violent. Now if there's a bank robbery they figure it's best to kill the witnesses so they can't testify. Guns can make people cowards. In the Tieshia Miller case where the cops opened fire on an epeliptic who was dazed in a car- - people like John Kovel said "When you start firing the edreniline gets to pumping and you can't help yourself". I guess shooting a gun is kind of a sexual thing. There was a case here in LA where a guy was in a van and a rain of 112 bullets decended on him from all the cops in the area turning the street into the OK carrell. On this soap opera this guy named Spike was blackmailing a guy named Chris. First of all blackmailers are losers anyhow. Just call their bluff and stare them down. Right away they are disarmed. It's always escaped me why the things you have to do to appease a blackmailer are ten times worse than the thing he was going to rat you out for in the beginning. Why jump fron the frying pan into the fire? Chris should turn Spike in and face the music and redeem himself. Then he'll be able to sleep at night knowing he did the right thing. A clear contience is something people should value more. Chris was acting out of fear of Spike, when Spike is basically a man without power unless Chris give it to him. Spike's boss is dead. Now Spike is on his own, unless you enable him.
Well, it seems ABC has its own political stance to take to maintain its integrety. We heard on Rush today that ABC has this excellent 9 - 11 movie they plan to show next weekend on how Bin Laden became a problem and how the Clinton CIA had a chance to eliminate him in 1998 but they were told from headquarters that the adminestration would not back them. Bill Clinton has personally phoned ABC demanding that they edit out all the offencive segments that make his adminestration look bad. As for this blog I had the wrong name in a key segment I had to correct. I suppose the origional name might be a cause of discussion for some.
Finally I 'd like to talk about the Nazi haulocost. Dietrich Bonhoffer was one Christian, a Lutheran, who stood up against Hitler. He is revered as The Real Thing by liberals and conservatives alike. The church should be full of Dietrich Bonhoffers and if that were so- - Hitler would not have gotten to first base with his genocidal plans for the Jews. It's just a matter of looking at your moral compus and getting your ethical bearings so you know what to do. Even a pacifist should take up arms if the evil looming is hanious enough. Interestingly King Saul stood up against God in the Bible when Jehovah God wanted King Saul to comit genocide against the Amalikites and wipe them out, every last man, woman and child. King Saul wasn't ready to do that, and lost his kingdom over it. Joining Jehovah is kind of like joining the mafia. Among the things you have to sacrifice is your sense of morality. "Your morality is not your own; God owns everything". I don't know if there is such a thing as Jewish karma but if I were a Jew I'd look at stuff like this and ask myself the question "Is it true we take our morals from the people we associate with?" I'm not letting Jehovah off the hook here because it's in the Bible, affirmed over and over as the word of God over centuries. Is genocide ever morally justified?
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