Intro comments before the Christmas message….
The “best” assembled in a new “populist” coalition, Wendell Krossa
A raft of the best of presidential candidates for the 2028 election have been brought together in a new populist coalition around Donald Trump. I would argue that no one, in the entirety of US history, appears better qualified of that bunch, than Vivek Ramaswamy. And hey, I can meddle a bit in your business down south because we are soon to become the 51st state. Yes, I get Trump was just kidding with Trudeau, or “bogarting” as a friend from Washington, DC used to call it. Meaning- “intimidate, bully, scare, browbeat” but in a fun sort of way. Keep doing it Donald. We love it.
I have two criteria to evaluate anyone potentially positioning themself to run for president of a large world economy, two critical requirements that make one suitable to manage an economy, requirements that are so calamitously absent from our PM Justin Trudeau.
Political candidates should preferably (1) have experience successfully running a business, understanding debt and cash flow issues, regulation and taxation issues as they impact the environment in which businesses can flourish, pricing and competition issues, and so on. And of course, how to pick and encourage skilled employees to perform at their best. Not being a “boss from hell”, the dictatorial type that ruins life for colleagues.
Business experience prepares candidates to understand the environment that is required for businesses to flourish. An environment that governments must promote, as Ben Carson outlined so well during his 2016 run.
And whether a candidate has firsthand business experience or not, the even more critical requirement is (2) to have an understanding of Classic Liberal principles, systems of common law, and representative institutions that best create the environment in which businesses can succeed.
The businesses of a society- i.e. small, medium, large- create jobs and wealth. Government does not and should not do that. Government contributes to the success of the business sector by protecting and promoting the principles, laws, and institutions of Classic Liberalism as in protecting and promoting the rights and freedoms of all citizens, equally.
The people of a society create businesses, jobs, and wealth. And to do so at optimum, citizens need protected private property rights, freedom to engage binding contracts with one another, a low taxation and low regulatory environment, among other liberal democracy principles and practices. In a word, freedom to innovate and create.
And that is also how peace is engendered/generated in human society. What they call “the moralizing influence of gentle commerce”. Citizens who understand that providing services and products for others, in a manner that promotes mutual benefit as in making the effort to just get along and help one another, well, that is how bottom-up peace and order emerges in society.
Vivek is among the best at explaining all this. He gets Classic Liberalism and he has the successful business experience to back his understanding of the larger framework of Classic Liberal principles and institutions that produce successful societies. I have never seen a better qualified candidate for president.
Just some meddling as a citizen of the 51st state, eh.
Good sources for every politician to read: Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom”, William Bernstein’s “The Birth of Plenty”, among others.
Note: I never tire of the story that former Socialist Joshu Muravchik tells in his history of Socialism- “Heaven On Earth: The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of Socialism”. He notes the Mitterrand coalition of socialists and communists that won the election in France in 1981. As all socialists/communists reflexively do on gaining power, they started to nationalize sectors of the French economy (Taking ownership of the “means of production” for the state elites to then operate on behalf “of the people”. Yeah, right.). They mindlessly operated in line with Marx that the number one evil to remove from society was private property.
Well, within the year the French economy tanked. Amazingly, they had the sense to then back off, realizing that they were mucking things up just like every other socialist experiment has done. Then (hold your hats), the leader of the communist faction of Mitterrand’s coalition, a guy further to the left of Mitterrand whom I would assume would be even more anti-private business than Mitterrand, admitted humbly, “We must respect business as the creator of wealth in a society”. Holy shitoli, eh. I wish Trudeau would get this.
This from Jimmy Dore
Your head will spin you into dizziness with what is said in the first few minutes and after. The guy in the video clip that Dore plays, says, “It’s hard to initiate crises… It’s hard to see how the US president can get us to war with Iran”.
He moves on to play another video clip of General Wesley Clark (2007) speaking about a conversation that he had with Paul Wolfowitz who told him that “the real purpose of the US military is to “start wars and change governments”. Clark said his head was spinning on hearing that.
He noted that Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others initiated a policy coup to push the “The Project For A New American Century”, the project to destabilize the Middle East and put it under US control. Iraq had shown these zealous warmongers that Russia could not interfere to stop the US.
As Clark adds, there was no full-fledged American debate on this. No Senators, or anyone else, pushed back on this project.
Dore explains, all these wars- i.e. Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine- are preplanned and the population is propagandized with lies to support them. Glenn Greenwald covers similar ground- How we are lied to in order to gain public support for war after war.
As the guy in the other video explained, the US has to initiate crises to destabilize other countries so the US can go to war and overthrow their governments and then access resources. All that matters is “What is in the US’s interests”.
Ah, you think you have heard it all… then this. Dore summed it up a few years ago, “We are the most propagandized people in the world and we don’t know it”. Along with Greenwald, Matt Taibbi and others also cover these things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqqR-Cb09Bc
Explanatory notes on comments below (“Happy New Year without any fear”): Wendell Krossa
I am somewhat aware of the nuance and differing positions within the tradition of “pacifism”, the differing philosophical positions. But below I am just making a point in relation to the lax criminal justice policies of Progressives and the consequent rises in crime in our cities and consequent denial of peace and security for average citizens. While the US leads in illustrating this, Canada has followed the same relaxation of criminal justice with the same rising crime outcomes.
What is this pacifist project? I use that term because it’s a tradition understood by many people. Today, an essential principle in pacifism appears to have been embraced by Progressives and is expressed now in terms of DEI ideology- i.e. the statuses of “victimhood/victimizer” that are assigned without discrimination to all in such categories, with victimhood blamed on history’s long-past oppressors. Hence, Progressives, holding a view of victimhood as a never-ending status for those that they designate as such, go to the extremist nonsense of promoting no restraint on criminals as proper “justice” for them as victims, even as that dogmatic stance ruins life for many other citizens, creating many actual victims, an outcome that could be avoided with better approaches.
Note the previously posted comment from Walter Kirn on an episode of “America This Week”, where aside from the issue of rising violent crimes, he outlined his horrific experience of trying to just purchase formerly open-shelved goods that are now locked up. Another consequence of Progressive pacifism policies.
Pacifism has long been associated with Quaker and Mennonite traditions where “love your enemy” was taken to mean “turn the other cheek” as in nonviolent response to violent aggressors/offenders. Some took that to extremes, in the refusal to even engage in defensive just wars against assaults by foreign aggressors. Or on the personal level, dogmatic pacifists opted to not engage any physical defense in the face of violent attacks, the refusal to use force of any kind.
Admittedly, those are more extremist positions. But it appears that something like this is at play in the Progressive treatment of violent offenders in US cities.
Anyway, more on that further below….
“What goes on in your heart”, Ringo Starr (Rubber Soul)
Site intention (the “Daddy” thing driving me), and taking up Lennon’s hope for “a New Year without any fear”- Wendell Krossa
Intro: To do my job properly of re-assuring everyone that it will be alright, I, of necessity, must push past the material (the physical/spiritual boundary) into speculation on the metaphysical to respond properly to the ultimate pull of our primal impulse to meaning. Most people have done this across history, hence the metaphysical speculations of the great world religions (not that I agree with any of them), as well as the “metaphysical” speculations of contemporary philosophy and science. Yes, science “speculates” also. Note the evidence-absent speculations on multi-verse, surrounding invisible realms- 10, 11, 26, etc., dark energy/matter, Self-Organizing Principle, Quantum fields, and so on.
To call the above scientific theorizing “speculation” will annoy materialist types. Well, read Jim Baggot’s “Farewell to Reality: How Fairytale Physics Betrays the Search for Scientific Truth” and “Mass: The quest to understand matter from Greek atoms to quantum fields”. Also, Sabine Hossenfelder’s “Lost In Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray”, among other similar work. Crossing the science/philosophy boundary to speculate on the metaphysical is very similar to what “religious” or “spiritual” types have done across history in crossing the science/religion boundary. That human curiosity thing.
(Note: I don’t need to justify anything to materialist positions. And, being just a curious commoner, I don’t have any reputation to defend, so I feel freer engaging speculation-type insights. Such insights still have much to contribute to human knowing, explanation, and our meaning/purpose impulse.)
My Daddy thing “to reassure” is behind most of the comment that I put up here to show that life is not “becoming worse” as many believe after being propagandized by Declinism ideology and the apocalyptic nonsense that dominates media (e.g. Hollywood story-telling, news media, “climate apocalypse” crusade, etc.).
Julian Simon got it right in exposing such fraud with good evidence on all the main indicators of the true state of life. Read his “Ultimate Resource” and the many follow-up studies that re-affirmed his groundbreaking work. Life has been improving over the long-term due to essential human goodness, creativity, and compassion.
But while all such evidence on the state of life is reassuring at some level, it does not, in a finally conclusive manner, get to the ultimate roots of what our primal impulse for meaning is stirring us to probe more. Our impulse to meaning agitates us from the depths of our spirit with unending longing to understand meaning/purpose in deeper and more complete ways.
Whether there is any hope of ever getting to finally conclusive answers, we have to push on and try to understand the real TOE. The one that does not deny the critical “spiritual” element. What, or better Who, is that which creates and sustains all in existence? Is it really something defined in terms of the threat theology that we have inherited from the primitive mythological and religious traditions that have dominated human narratives and consciousness from the beginning?
No. It can’t be that. Threat theology has severely deformed human consciousness and personality across the millennia. It has incited immeasurable harm through battering generations of people with unnecessary fear, anxiety, shame/guilt, despair, depression, nihilism, and violence.
A rare few across history have challenged the threat theology traditions and were killed for their dissent. As Jesus accused the priests and other elites of his day, “You killed the prophets sent to you” (Matthew 23). He referred to the Old Testament prophets who dared to challenge the sacrifice industry and were put to death by the priests of the Hebrew BCE era.
The OT prophet’s protest against the sacrifice industry was a protest against elite domination of commoners. Elites had burdened commoners with the tax and regulation enslavement of that era- i.e. the costly sacrifices and offerings industry that the poor could not afford. Jesus rebuked those elites with the reminder that “who would be great among you must be your servant” and not lord over you (Matthew 23:10).
Historical Jesus was another in the line of heroic dissenters to the narrative of the sacrifice industry and who were put to death for their protest against the enslaving tax and regulation programs of previous millennia that were controlled by the dominating elites of the time.
And the great stunner in this story is that his death for protesting sacrifice was then turned into the myth of the supreme blood sacrifice of a godman to appease a wrathful God, a sacrifice to pay for all the sins of humanity. Sacrifice taken to universal, cosmic status.
The greatest anti-sacrifice icon in all history turned into the greatest sacrifice in history, and beyond (i.e. his sacrifice as a cosmic, metaphysical, eternal reality).
The result? Paul’s Christ-ianity. With this anti-sacrifice icon transformed into ultimate Sacrifice- Can oxymoronic get any more moronic? Any more contradictory? Any more cognitive dissonant?
I try to emphasize the egregious nature of the error in this Jesus/Paul difference by framing it as “History’s greatest contradiction, fraud, lie… whatever.” But even such terms don’t get at the insanity of this mythology that has dominated the Master Story of Western civilization for two millennia, with continuing powerful influence on our narratives today both religious and secular. Shaping narratives today that have resulted in the horrifically destructive outcomes of crusades like Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism. I need not remind readers, once again, of the research on this by historians Arthur Herman, Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, David Redles, and others.
The apocalyptic feature in Paul’s Christ has been most notably destructive in its influence, joined to the millennial hope element- i.e. salvation promised after the violent apocalyptic purging of threatening enemies.
Once again, heed psychologist Harold Ellen’s comment on the dominant influence of Paul’s Christ on Western narratives and civilization:
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God… this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years.
“And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…”
Hence, the violent and destructive outcomes we saw in Marxism (repeating today in “Neo” versions), Nazism, and are now emerging in environmental alarmism and its “salvation” scheme of decarbonization.
My persistent point here has to do with the ideals that have long been deeply embedded in our subconscious as “archetypes”. They continue to influence us to shape our contemporary narratives with similar themes, themes that continue to impact our minds, emotions, motivations, behavior, too often to destructive outcomes.
The project to correct what we inherited with the stunningly humane speculation of Historical Jesus on the nature of deity as unconditional love. Taking “God is love” to its highest reach, to inexpressible transcendence, Wendell Krossa
Human curiosity that probes the “metaphysical bullshit” (the dismissal of a pissed atheist) has always been about the curiosity to know more about what or who creates and sustains all in existence. That is fundamentally related to our impulse to understand our “purpose” here on Earth. Why we exist. This curiosity about such ultimate issues has always been essential to our primal impulse for meaning.
If Someone (Ultimate Consciousness, Mind, Intelligence, Source) created this material realm, then for what purpose? It helps to know something of this purpose, so we don’t waste our lives. This is “the kids wanting to be like Daddy” thing. And yes, most people in fulfilling the common urge to love are getting the main purpose thing right.
These big questions of existence and purpose are never going to be erased from human consciousness. And we have been given some very good answers by sages from across history.
No better answer was ever offered than that from Historical Jesus. And this appeal to that man comes from one (myself) who is not “a believer in Jesus” but is just an impressed admirer of good insights that point us to the highest ideals of all. I see in the central statements of Historical Jesus the best of speculation on the highest form of good or love as unconditional and universal. And that is self-validating as being most true about the ultimate Good and Love that is God. And that then points to what is most real as in Ultimate Reality.
First: Just a refresher of the context of “the single most profound insight ever offered”. The Jesus version of this states the nature of ultimate reality in relation to the highest form of human behavior (highest as in most humane)- exhibit no conditions love toward enemies because that is what God is like, God generously exhibits unconditional love toward all, toward both good and bad people (his Matthew 5 and Luke 6 summaries).
These summaries of his message are framed in the “behavior based on similar validating belief” pattern that has been the practice of humans from prehistory till today.
Now, once again, here below is the finest set of ethical ideals/practices ever stated, and the closest that we get to what love actually is. And how about this for a New Year’s resolution- to be just like God? Here it is- Do this and you will be just like God, “Be merciful just as God is merciful”.
As Joseph Campbell said, when we orient our lives to universal love (similar to unconditional) then we “tower in stature as maturely human”, as the heroes of our quests. Loving universally and unconditionally is how we conquer the real enemy and monster in life, how we fight and win the real battle in life, the battle of good against evil that runs down the center of every human heart (Solzhenitsyn). Mandela did exactly this- i.e. loved enemies unconditionally- and achieved the highest possible levels of human accomplishments in life. We all admired him for that. What he achieved in love, are practices that are open equally to all alike. Love is the great human leveler in life.
The guiding ideals/principles of Historical Jesus:
“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full.
“But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.
“Then you will be just like God because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36 or Matthew 5:38-48.)
This can be summarized in this single statement: “Love your enemy because God does”.
A striking example of non-retaliatory, unconditional love: The Prodigal Father story in Luke 15:11-31.
The Father (representing God) did not demand a sacrifice, restitution, payment, apology, or anything else before forgiving, fully accepting, and loving the wasteful son.
(Again, in comment below it will be made clear that this is not advocacy for pacifism in the face of violent assault by offenders foreign or domestic. If we take the Jesus material as advocacy for pacifism in the face of evil- i.e. “turn the other cheek” in response to violent assault- then we have missed the attitudinal/behavioral point that we can take from his statements. Yes, violent people must be restrained/incarcerated, but then treated humanely- not with “eye for eye” retaliatory punishment- in order for us to maintain our own humanity in the face of evil.)
Moving along….
Jesus said- Do this because this is what God is really like, and if you do this you will be like God. In the above summary of his message, he overturned the entire history of mythology, religion, and philosophy that had long claimed there were darkly threatening punitive forces or spirits/gods behind life punishing humans through the destructive elements of the natural world (i.e. natural disasters, disease, accidents, predatory cruelty). That psychopathology has been more damaging to human consciousness and life than any other pathology ever beaten into human consciousness. It has promoted the worst form of slavery ever- i.e. mental/emotional slavery of the human spirit.
That past history of threat theology, and its horrific consequences on humanity, makes the Jesus message the most profoundly liberating insight ever presented to human consciousness. And corollary to that, it makes Paul’s offense of burying the central insights of Jesus within the entirely opposite narrative of his Christology (Christ myth) the greatest blunder and fallacy in all history.
Paul short-circuited the greatest potential liberation movement ever offered to humanity. Christianity needs to own that horrific error and start honoring the man Jesus for who he actually was and what he actually taught. Christianity needs to responsibly recognize the profound difference between Jesus-ianity and Christ-ianity and stop claiming sole rights to represent Jesus. It has blown that responsibility entirely.
So here below is more of my response to John Lennon’s hope and longing for “a New Year without any fear”. I take off from that as not just freedom from the material fears that Julian Simon responded to about life supposedly declining toward something worse, but a year without fears of things much deeper and more profound in relation to our impulse for ultimate meaning.
Moving right along… Varied assumptions/speculations/conclusions from the stunning new theology of Historical Jesus.
Christmas brings varied emotions to the surface to be more intensely felt, emotions like love and the Lennon-hope of “a happy new year… without any fear”.
What drives this site most fundamentally is my intention/motivation to tell everyone- “Don’t be afraid, its going to be alright, ultimately”. Maybe not here in this world and in this life, as suffering appears to serve some purpose in our individual “hero’s quest” that we cannot fully understand as we endure it in our uniquely diverse life stories.
Based on the central Jesus insight on theology, I have to believe that all the details of our lives, as ugly and nasty as some/many are, will ultimately make sense. There will be no meaningless suffering despite the appearance of randomness here. All will make sense in a realm where understanding is liberated from the blinders here. This is a hope more than a knowing.
Moving on to main point…
I base my “going to be alright, ultimately” on the Jesus insight on theology- i.e. God as stunningly, inexpressibly transcendent unconditional love. That means all are safe in love, specifically safe in the highest reach of love- the unconditional love that is God. As Bob Brinsmead says, “Those whom God loves unconditionally, are never forgotten.”
Taking the Jesus insight on the nature of God as unconditional love, I affirm, among other conclusions, the “omnipresence” point that such Love defines the sustaining deity behind all reality, the God that sustains every atom in existence and, hence, is present throughout all life, and most intensely present and involved in our personal stories- i.e. the ethical development thing as fundamental to all human story.
Awareness of this omni-present love may rarely be a “felt” thing, as some have argued that it does us no good to be overly aware of the presence of deity in this life. That would introduce an “overwhelming interference” element into human decision-making, rendering free choice for good against evil less authentically free.
Nonetheless, the transcendent love that is God is all around us, permeating the entire material realm from surrounding dimensions that are inside us as much as around us (“interpenetrating the material”). Such love is the Ultimate Reality that creates and sustains all other reality in existence each moment and therefore is the essential consciousness at the core of all reality. Something akin to “panpsychism” but not of the materialist type.
Insert/aside note: I once joined my Dad outside in the dark of night. He stood, looking up at a clear night sky, dense with flickering stars. He said, “What would it be. What would it be if we really believed that God was right here with us.” Well Dad (long passed), imagine that presence in terms of a God that is the profoundly wondrous love that Historical Jesus stated was the true nature of God. It adds something altogether more wonderous to divine omnipresence.
Playing with the great Jesus insight further….
The greater unconditional Love that assures us that “everything going to be alright” is also the core of our essential self, inseparable from our human spirit. This is the truth of the “oneness” of all reality, especially the human oneness with deity that Hindus express in the phrase “I am That”, though they are referring to a different metaphysical reality.
I also draw insights from NDE accounts to affirm that “It’s going to be alright in the end”, alright as in future states of infinite bliss, peace, love, and overall perfection that is the realm of fully revealed deity, the after-life realm of ongoing human development and exploration.
The eventual liberation of consciousness from this 3- or 4-dimensional realm, means liberation from the experience of limited perception through our 5 physical senses to infinitely unlimited creativity and progress/development in other worlds. As Joseph Campbell suggested, we are part of a greater Consciousness and only part of that consciousness is transmitted here through our material brains and bodies in order for us to have a human experience in this world. The brain functions as a “transmitting organ” for our greater consciousness.
Why even offer these “unprovable speculations”? Because across history endless speculation on these things has already been done by countless billions of our forebears and they came up with some pretty nasty stuff, as they reasoned from the “threat theology” psychopathology that dominated the core of their systems of belief- i.e. the cohering center that was angry, punitive deity.
Look at the inherited idea, for example, of an angry God who punishes people through nature, a myth that vies for worst of all “bad religious ideas”. That pathology/fallacy has been mindlessly reframed by moderns in new versions of threat theology, even ‘secular/ideological” versions- i.e. vengeful Gaia, angry Planet/Mother Earth, punitive Universe, and payback karma. Threat theology still enslaves and darkens human consciousness widely today. So at the least, even if you find speculations on the metaphysical make you squeamish, offer better alternatives.
Some more…
What about the “evil triad” of inherited impulses inside each one of us that are the cause of so much misery in this world- i.e. the tribalism, domination, punitive destruction of differing others impulses? I would apply “Alright” to that in the sense that the Jesus insight that God is unconditional and that is the highest ideal that we should aim for as it most potently counters each element of the evil triad. The ideal of unconditional as the highest form of love enables us to conquer the inner enemy/monster by embracing and practicing no tribalism, no domination of others, and no punitive destruction of differing others. It is the weapon to slay the real monster/enemy inside us.
And we back this ideal to frame our lives with the recognition that ultimately in the perfection of the Oneness that is stunningly inexpressible unconditional love, no one will be excluded in the future. In that ultimate Oneness there will be no tribalism of included or excluded persons, no cosmic dualism for eternity. And there will be no domination of elites over commoners. And certainly, with unconditional there will be no justice as punitive destruction of differing others. That fills in the big picture background to encourage similar behavior in this world, the ultimate ideal that inspires our behavior here and now.
A suggestion- Hold this truth of “ultimately alright in love” as your most fundamental belief. Whatever you suffer in life, this is ultimately true and real, the only thing that will make final sense in the end and answer our primal impulse for meaning at the deepest levels.
Concluding summary:
Use the insight of Historical Jesus that God is stunningly inexpressible unconditional love. Embrace this central theme in the message of Historical Jesus, and use it to counter the millennia of threat theology that has dominated narratives and enslaved minds with the traumatizing themes of punishing deity behind the harmful elements of the world, buttressed with psychopathologies like apocalypse and after-life harm as in myths of hell.
There is no angry God separated from imperfect people and demanding salvation conditions with threats for not meeting such conditions. There has never been any such reality. There has always and only been love at the core of reality.
None of the above speculations, based on the Jesus insights, are religious conclusions that point us to engage religious beliefs, rituals, or lifestyles.
The central insights of Historical Jesus are for free spirits. What they do is liberate the human spirit to freely create a unique story, to make a unique contribution to life framed with the most humane ideals. The insights of Historical Jesus- i.e. his stunning new theology and associated conclusions- liberate from all that enslaves, burdens, and sidetracks us in life.
The Jesus insights release our minds and spirits entirely from threat theology and the religions that build their traditions around that. The Jesus insights end the elite domination of commoners, notably religious elites who have long controlled people with ultimate fears that incite irrationality in populations and the embrace of wasteful and destructive “salvation” schemes.
Ah, it’s been such a long and miserable history of enslavement of the worst kind- mental, emotional, subconscious, the enslavement of human spirits.
With the Jesus insights we can see the way now to a “New Year without any fear”.
Oh, the insanity of the past 8 years, Wendell Krossa
To get some sense of the insanity of the past 8 years, look at the heroic people who have come forth to take such courageous stands for freedom- i.e. Elon Musk, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and many others. Often “stood before the gates of hell but refuse to back down” (paraphrase of Tom Petty’s song).
These heroic figures get Classic Liberalism and how critical it is to protect and promote free speech, equality for all, full inclusion and diversity, and more that is essential to our liberal democracies. And boy, have they paid for their clarity and courage. Being horribly vilified by fellow liberals as “far right extremists, Fascists, etc.”, demonized, even subjected to calls for criminalization and imprisonment ( https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/musk-x-censorship/2024/08/25/id/1177819/ ).
And all this insanity from so-called liberals who have done the Alice-in-Wonderland flip to became pro-war, pro-censorship zealots, and more, who want to eliminate the First Amendment that is the very foundation of all freedom. And the rest of us continue to puzzle how these former liberals can take such positions against authentic democracy and don’t seem to realize what they have become and what they are doing.
Ah, Shellenberger, keep probing the psychopathology behind this.