Escape from "Salvation"

REPUBLICANS - WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING  First of all their view of human nature is wrong.  Jesus Christ seemed to feel that the poor and "unwashed masses" were basically good people.  The Republicans, like that Hobbs philosopher guy Hartman talks about, believe that most of mankind is inherently bad and they need some Royal Class to function as "husbands" over them to keep them in check, to herd the cattle, if you will.  Mitt Romney is basically some kind of indulged and spoiled "Child King" kind of like certain households where the child brat essentially "runs" the household with his tyrades and antics.  It's like the kid on that Twilight Zone episode where if you're bad he'll "send you into the corn field" or do other unspeakable things to you.  You see it in Mitt Romney and that hair cutting example of that gay guy in college.  You see it when he says we don't need student loans because "you can always borrow the money from your parents".  People like Judy think ANY form of birth control is some giant UN conspiracy to "control the world's population, which you know they want to do".  These Republican endulged rich rulers we would have as our Overlords haven't really lived life in the normal sense of the word with its heartaches and challenges.  I was diisheartened when I was looking over my Dad's books after he died looking for "To Seek a Newer World" and "The Conscience of a Conservative" both of them.  I didn't come accross either, probably because my sister in law, Marie took them already.  But I did see "Levaiathon" by that Hobbs guy, who basically claims that men are at heart beasts and can't be trusted.  John Calvin had essentially the same view of the common man, with his totalitarian policies in Geneva, where you would not want to live if you were a Catholic.  Even the old testament abounds with words like Compassion, Mercy, and Justice, and the rich being abased and the humble being lifted up.  But don't anybody tell Mitt Romney.  He continues to go through life believing that getting the vote of the top five percent in Income- - - will be sufficient to win the Presidential race.  The media continues to regard Mitt Romney and Barock Obama as moral equals of each others.  I've been telling people that Obama is leading in all the polls.  Even in the polls most adverse to the President he is leading by two or three percentage points.  But in other more specifically targeted question polls the President's lead is in double digits.  I'm actually gratified that the average Joe Citizen out there is just 'too dumb" to pick up on a lot of the dog whistle code speech in the movie "2016".  At best they are likely to be a bit baffled as to why things were phrased the way they were.  I wouldn't call Dr. Levy "Intellectually challenged".  His problem - like Romney's is that he is intellectually unchallenged.  No one dare come against a person of authority.  They say in the old days only the Court Jester dared say anything against the King but since he was regarded as an idiot, he could get away with it.  Romney apparently said that "large class size is irelivent to receiving a good education".  We know they would rather cut taxes for the rich rather than use that money to hire on more good people in the Teaching profession.  Newt Gingrich said it months ago, "Education without a religious indoctrination - - is Dangerous".  Thomas Jefferson was a deist who believed in free public education.  Now the tea party is openly questioning whether Jefferson's words should be trusted.  Lord knows they have written so many people out of their own party from Olympia Snow, to Christie Tood Whitman, to Arlen Specter, to Charlie Christ, and even Oren Hatch is not imune to their tea party purges, or as I said, even a Rick Perry endorsement is too liberal for their liking and they got someone to run against against him- - and worse yet- - to Win.  Birch Society Blues talked about this right wing echo chamber where "98% of my friends gotta go.  The other two percent are like me- - - fellow John Birchers".   They preach against "Liberationist Theology" and see dangers from the left literally everywhere.  The sheer unwarrented Paranpoia of Mitt Romney will be made manifest in the coming fall campaign and with any luck at all, Mitt Romney like Captain Queeg will to a complete melt-down, right before the onlooking eyes of the American public.

BACK FOR MORE ABUSE.  After the movie I informed her that oil production in the US was the highest in ten years and Judy said, “That doesn’t matter.  We still don’t produce oil”.  It was a complex in Westminster on Westminster blvd.  We watched the odd numbered addresses going down on the north side of the street.  We got there late but they were still showing trailers at deafening volume.  The popcorn smelled like they had burnt something.  All of the trailers were period pieces and pretty crappy.  One of them took place in Ireland in the middle ages or what not.  What struck me about the movie was this guy from India who was a strange bird.  He must have hated the Ghandi movie because he seemed to hate his own people and country, and the great progress India has made in eighty years.  He got a job in the Reagan administration.  I’m not going to cover the whole movie but there were a lot of coded “dog whistle” messages you’d have to be “one of them” to pick up on.  There was a basic love of the White race and disdain for the colored races.  This theme was transcendent in the movie.  If there were any references to US businessmen it was a glowing, positive one.  There was not one word about the slightest bit of Wall Street corruption in the whole movie.  Anyhow the movie ended and I asked Paul the time and it was 4:13 and I pretty much knew I would miss dinner.  But we hurried back here and I made it in time for them to give me a late plate from the kitchen - - by the skin of my teeth.  Dinner was one of these rice ball shaped cassaroles with chicken in it, and carrots, and a green salad and tapioca pudding with orange Kool-Aid.  Paul sat at the table with me and we talked a little more.  That other lady with the strange name had to be at church or Paul would have invited them in, too.  I told Paul about my watch not working and no action was taken on that.  As per usual I didn’t really miss the protracted period of not smoking.  SATURDAY MORNING Dr. Levy talked of the very different younger generation of our grandchildren that are around now and how they don’t get out doors and aren’t even taught script writing in the schools.  Someone has Dr. Levy’s flash drive for a second week so was unable to show us his videos of Italy taken over two months ago.  There was some glancing talk of politics.  Dr. Levy mentioned his “massive tax increase” he’d have to pay since he implied his income is in excess of $250,000.  He says his wife earns more than he does.  He likes multiple employment which is insurance against being let go at one particular job.  He says he spends fifteen hours at Founders per week, so he had much more of a major emotional investment in them than he has us.  Class ended at 9:42 on the digital clock for a total of an hour and twenty minute session.

LATTER DAY SAINTS RETURN. I was out on the patio smoking when Seid again came out and invited everybody to the gathering they are having in the courtyard north of the fountain.  I think an outdoor setting is inherently more relaxing and the weather was pleasant and the fountain soothing.  He didn’t say there would be food but there was.  We had rainbow sherbet and I had three helpings of that and two pieces of yellow cake with raisons or something in it, which was a little dry.  Nicky told Phyllis that Seid was suffering from stomach pains and his appetite from the chemo was down, though he looked plump enough.  Marcia sat next to me so Wally and Elizabeth could sit together.  Nicky had to deal with these paired chairs.  Wally had a scrape on his knee and said he had suffered from “internal injuries’ in a fall.  The reason for John Darling’s absence is that he fell the other day and is in the hospital “as he has a habit of doing”.  Larry Barton apparently fell and cracked his head open, Wally reports.  I asked of Wall had clearance to go into the Temple and Seid said he did, and then went into a little talk about “worthiness” seemingly to me.  I needed to hear the message because Seid said “You shouldn’t let these like coffee or smoking separate you from the fellowship with God.  He then said he used to drink coffee, which kept him out of the Temple, and he didn’t even try.  But now he drinks hot chocolate.  There was a lot of other news I picked up on like picnics and such.  Loretta came in late because she claims she didn’t know where we were meeting, even though I saw her in the hall and - - assumed- - .  She didn’t want ice cream or cake.  Seid stressed the importance of having a cantine of water.  They said Manfred was doing fine with a big TV in his room and he still plays Bingo and the nurses fawn all over him.  Wally related a story about how “one day the heat just got to him and he fell”.  Paul Evens was there but the one guy who didn’t say anything.  Mickey was there- - and I went up to him and asked him if he was enjoying himself, just to be sociable.  After this I had medication from Judy in the hall.  She had chocolate chip cookies for us.  On a TV in a room tuned to ABC they talked about how “Mormon temple services are not closed because they are “secret” but rather, because they are Sacred, and that makes sense.  Of course Romney will be the first Mormon nominee of any party.  The gathering didn’t last as long as I thought.

FALLS OF 1962 AND 1963.  You know Christianity is “The gift that keeps on taking” or one of them.  It was after seeing the movie “The Gift” in November 1963 at a Church Congregational dinner that I kind of made an informal “decision for Christ”.  How interesting that before that moment I “didn’t have any problems in my life’ but that was all to change, and the sequence of events in the next couple months is fascinating.  I’ll tell you the first.  My first quarter report card came in the mail- and in those days the first quarter usually ended around Vetterans day and the mails took a few days.  Dad got on my case about that report card for something even though I had gotten four B’s that outing.  The grave average was almost exactly the same as the previous report cards and all of the cards in Junior High were pretty consistent.  The hostility for this particular report card was something that baffled me. A lot of stuff that went down at the turn of the 1963-1964 year baffled me. To summarize them - - the harder I tried to rise above the tempest, the worse it got.   I did late in the fall of 1963 join brother Al in attending Jr High Fellowship at the church on Friday night and that was a good group.  [ FALL 1962]  .  “Back in Black” is on KLOS right now.  But there is no small number of items which make the fall of 1962 unique over any other fall.  First of all it was the only fall of the six where we took the bus to school and I guess had that much more time to socialize.  It was kind of nice now that I look back on it.  This fits in nicely with number two.  Because seventh grade was [Mal Evans insists I delete this].  And I remember other people helping me carry the big box of books home from the Monument and Broadway bus stop.  This was the year when we would make the periodic trips to Savanna to get our Sabin polio vaccine sugar cubes.  This was also the season where Allan would go Go-Karting in the Savanna HS parking lot, and he’d let me ride, because Allan and I actually got along well in those days.  This was the “pre-harrassment” era, which commenced not for another year.  Also the Mickey Mouse Club was showing reruns of their stuff on TV after six or seven years or so, and it was kind of interesting to take a stroll down Memory Lane.  Also involving Walt Disney,  at Walt Disney school that fall they showed what I believe were free Disney movies right there in the old cafeteria.  Most of the kids were younger than I was but a few ere in my grade.  Then we have [my family's church name] Church and taking a family photo for the upcoming church 1963 Directory.  This is the only time I remember that we shot pictures that fall and they had a new directory out in a couple of months at the beginning of the year.  Also this was the only fall of the six where Dad was out actively looking for a new car at auto dealers.  He was looking at Checker Cabs and we sat in them and some were so roomy they had jumper bar seats installed.  I remember seeing the 1963 Corvette Stingray and I was thinking how modern cars had become.  Of course we didn’t get around to actually buying a car till the following February 11^th at Eddie Hopper Chevrolet.  It was a metalic green.  I had never been ice skating before fall of 1962 and late that fall there was this ice skating club at school.  I joined that after only having skated one previous time.  Also this was about the only time for ages where they had post play-off baseball series that were not the World Series.  The Dodgers and the Giants were tied and they did a best two out of three series, and the Giants won game three after splitting the previous to so they played the Yankees - - and lost, I believe.  And yes there was that other thing in October 1962.  Oh yes, the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is a momentus event that defined our times.  If the world had come to an end then our memories in heaven in eternity would be frozen as society was in October of 1962.