Sunday, October 30, 2016

The Hypocrites of the Morongo Valley

When your highest good is to be viewed as good, the result of your life and message is that you are good for nothing.  This is the biblical definition of Pharisee spirituality.  At the time of Jesus, the Pharisees were a part of the religious community of Israel and claimed to practically live out the instructions of their Old Testament religion.  The faith of the Pharisee was concerned mostly with being viewed as one of the good guys, the religiously pure, placing themselves at the front of the temple, giving grandiose prayers at worship and parading themselves in religious duds.  With their noses in the air, the Pharisees considered all others of lesser quality and questionable character.  Because of their self-imposed spiritual superiority and aloofness, their brand of spirituality had no influence upon others, they proved themselves to be good for nothing.
      
Christianity has always been conflicted at this point for just as the religion of Israel was stuck in the mirror, some believers are in that very same club.  These believers must be viewed by others as the moral ones, with moral values and moral friends living out a moral religion.  When Jesus entered the temple at age twelve, was he fellowshiping with the religious masters or was he debating with them?  In my limited understanding of the scripture, I believe that Jesus was debating with the masters about what was at the heart of their religion, a love for God which should culminate in a love for all others, sinner and saint.  This opinion cannot be proof texted for we are not told but this opinion seems to fit the before and after scriptures.

I am a short term, five year, resident of Landers and the Morongo Valley.  We love it here, my dogs, Hammer, Belle and our pet gander Herbert.  It did not take long, however, to assess that a segment of the religious community of the Morongo Basin may have a possible priority of looking good to the folk, no matter the cost.  You know, that forest for the trees thing.  This presidential election season has confirmed my suspicion as our Republican political leadership can only trash the man, Donald J Trump. Joining forces with the Democratic smear misters of the valley, Chad Mayes objects to Donald Trump on moral grounds?  I ask, what is moral about what you are doing, now, today, not twenty years ago?  Corneal Cook is hiding in his foxhole when his military brothers need a friend in the White House.  None of this makes sense on biblical moral grounds or if one prefers, with the use of pure logic.

The only possible explanation for their collusion with the left can be pure self-interest.  All the morality plays and hiding are cowardly actions taken to bring home the vote and rejoin the ranks of the politically corrupted.  I apologize but could we return to the Bible.  Was it not Jesus who slammed the religion of Israel six times in Mathew, Chapter 23, “You hypocrites!”, each time exposing another facet of their duplicitous nature.  The biblical Greek word that is translated hypocrite for us, means to be an actor on a stage, to be playing a role so it can be seen and appreciated by men.  Should we not ask, what is at the heart of our Republican political and moral hypocrites?   

Could it be the new trade agenda of Mr. Trump and the threat it poses to the funding sources of the political class of folk?  Could it be the promise of Mr. Trump to clean out the swamp?
 
G.Goslaw

Landers, CA.      

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Thank you, Mr. Donald J. Trump

Prime time television is one of the few distractions that remains for we old folks but that has changed with the new priority for overt violence and the amoral preferences of the young folk demographic.  Most modern movies are also more difficult to watch and they seem to lack any moral sense.  Movies that are entertaining as well as believable studies in human struggles and exceptionalism have disappeared.  Playing now on the obscure channels is one of the exceptions, a Tom Cruise movie that strikes a haunting chord reflecting our 2016 national political dilemma.  There is a sequel of this movie now playing in the theaters.

“Jack Reacher” rides into town on a bus without guns and luggage to help an Army buddy in a jam with the law.  Tough guy Jack cares little for money, power or our legal system but is big on justice, a rare commodity today.  In this movie, a violent criminal conspiracy is afoot.  It has woven a tangled web of murder, injustice and payola through the bureaucracy of the law and politics.  A conflagration ensues as the conspirators, at first underestimating the threat his presence poses, tries to take him out.  The action explodes for Jack Reacher is a different kind of hero but a hero that some of us still expect to show up in the nick of time.  I am not writing to Hi Desert Star to promote a movie, only to draw a dangerous comparison to the fortunes of we the people if we vote amiss in a few days.
 
The Clinton, Obama, Hillary Democratic machine is just such a criminal conspiracy.  Exaggeration you say, I wish it were so but the dots are connecting daily and bringing the tangled criminal web into bright focus just in time for you the voter to be the judge.  There is no life that is sacred, no law that cannot be broken and anyone who gets in the way is expendable.  The power of the law is used only to protect the conspirators and to punish the opposition by whatever means.  The machine is a threat to every American, first to the opposition and then to the very foundation of our democracy.  Wise men of every generation have rightly pointed out that money is the root of all evil and because of the Clinton, Obama, Hillary Democratic machine our national political institution is one big evil slush fund.

The 2016 presidential election is not about party loyalty our public policy and certainly not about the personal persona of each candidate.  The machine plays to the gullibility of the average voter. What is the presidential election about, really?  The question we will answer by our vote will be, will we the people submit our lives and the lives of our children to the control of the evil Empire?  There will be no return to regular politics, we, the voter will have sold our soul and futures.  The people are faced with a profound choice.  Will this country listen to Donald J. Trump? 

Will the machine promised milk and honey of the promised land arrive on schedule if Hillary is elected?  Or will the milk and honey machine cement our politics into the dictatorship of the evil money people?  Washington D.C. and most politicians are complicit with the conspiracy, those who do not willingly participate are condemned by their silence.

Thank you, Donald J. Trump, you are the hero of the people whether we wake up in time or prove our own gullibility.

G. Goslaw
Landers, Ca.

(Submitted to the Hi Desert Star newspaper, October 27, at 0815)



Saturday, October 15, 2016

moral me?

Morality among we humans is a very funny thing.  For starters, each of us has our own pet peeves and we all share an aversion to personally reflecting in our own moral mirror.  Not one of us should feel comfortable espousing attitudes of moral superiority but we do so every day, almost every hour if we are honest with ourselves.  Our presidential election conflict is a case in point.  There is no morally superior candidate for president although each is consuming extraordinary energy to convince we the voters of just that fact.  A rule of thumb, them that claim the moral high ground by disparage others really have none of their own and them that have the moral high ground seem to ignore the moral lapses of others.
 
This rule of thumb may or may not be a truism but it has been suggested by many years of observing human character flaws, both my own and others.  I grew up in the very evangelical church world and witnessed this truism played out regularly from church sinners and church saints.  The mature Christian hearts never dumped lapses of morality on particular people but were adamant about principle.  Those less mature believers used the trashing of people to make a point about a moral principle.  Big difference, whether the trashing comes from the people or the pulpit, this weakness is not a higher spiritual order.

This is not solely a church problem for it is a universal human character flaw that impacts each of our days.  The God of the heavens is now rolling around the clouds laughing hilariously at us and our moral childishness.  We just refuse to get it.  The voters of America are to blame most of all for the morality fisticuffs prior to the election.  Sex sells.  Give the people the opportunity to trash someone else for the guilt they carry for their own struggles and the important stuff gets buried.  Again, it is as plain as the nose on your face, we as humans and voters are so gullible and so easily manipulated.  The Hillary forces have been using this political campaign tool their entire careers and quite frankly, it is smart.
 
The question before us is how long will, we the voters, allow ourselves to be suckered?  How long will we allow ourselves to wallow in this morality play?  When will we get enough satisfaction out of trashing someone else who has more status, more charisma, more opportunities in life and most of all, more money that he has legally earned?  How long will we ignore what are good policies for the people?  How long will we ignore the financial pain that the Obama-Clinton dynasty has inflicted on the people with the current government run economy?  How long will we accept political leadership that betrays and sells the interests of the people for profit?  How long will we be lied too?

The God of the heavens is not laughing, there are tears rolling down his cheeks. His heart is breaking again, how long?

G.Goslaw

Landers, CA.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

In the Moment

In moments such as this American moment in 2016, we would have talked.  That personal loss is now the missing link in my life, to know, to experience and honestly share with one other person, one other human being, each new sunrise, each new happening, good or bad.  When one has such a blessing, the rest of the world can go hang for the best possible gifting is not to face the whatever alone. The human tragedy that besets all of us is that we rarely appreciate what we have when we have it.  Not until we are without do we completely understand.  Is America going to have to learn the hard way?  Is freedom no longer to be our national character?  Maybe, just maybe, we are due to feel the overt pain of political oppression before we can rightly appreciate what it means to be free.  As a country, in this political season, we are at such a moment as this, a moment that will shape our future or the lack of it.

As Americans we have been spoiled by two hundred fifty years of government that largely reflects the will of the people.  Our freedom is summed up in the word democracy.  Webster’s Dictionary defines a democracy as “government in which the people hold the ruling power either directly or through elected representatives, rule by the ruled”.  We the people and our interests are supposed to be what matters to our politicians.  Our freedom loving democracy is historically unique to this world as envisioned and enshrined by our forefathers in the Constitution.  Our new American establishment politicians of both parties say by their actions that this ancient document has become obsolete in our modern world.  No longer is their primary concern the people that they are supposed to serve, instead the people are to serve the rulers.  Their new plan is, in effect, a third world like political coup of America.  Some of us are sickened by that possibility and sickened as well that so many Americans seem not to understand the threat.  To remain America, we cannot ignore the fact when you betray the people you betray our democratic system.
 
The unaware or otherwise invested will object saying, wait one minute, our representative political system is not changing, we will be electing the same number of politicians to Congress and the White House.  The voting will go on!  Yes, the voting will go on but if both choices are self-serving politicians serving their donor class, the people have no real choice and the election result can only mean that the governed have no voice in their government.  Politics will continue to be as it has long been, only about words, empty promises and money, not doing the will of the people.  When there is no real choice given to the people by our elite politicians and their donor contributors, America will no longer be America.  Each voter needs to ask themselves on November 8, as Americans, who are we, who are we really?

I have been talking to cousin Jerry via email who comes to this election from a liberal mindset but is willing to use his brain.  He asked the question recently, when Mr. Trump loses the election, will you be disappointed in him?  My response, absolutely not, he is the hero of the people, willing to shoulder every abuse to finally give America a real choice.  Should the people choose to abandon our heritage, this country will have to learn the hard what freedom means.
 
We the people have the last opportunity to restore American integrity to our politics by electing Donald Trump.

G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.




Thursday, October 6, 2016

Distractions


The routine goals of life seem to have largely passed away.  That unavoidable retirement arrives and regardless of our relative ease, we seniors experience the reality that this time in life is about loss.  Once life was a Buick rolling along the freeway but now we ride in a golf cart down a narrow alley.  Raising a family, working a job or a career, finding new toys and chasing a few good times were, as we now understand them to be, little more than distractions.  Sure, they were largely positive distractions but being busy about such things, as fulfilling as they might have been, must surely be less than our destiny as humans?  Why are we here at this hour?  Why are we here at all?  Is our supposed contribution to the ongoing life mix our only reason for living?  Does life not mean more than this?
Distractions are what blocks these types of questions for all of us, the eternal questions remain largely unexplored and routinely avoided at all costs, even to the point of embracing destructive distractions.  This is the human condition and our modern secularism goes further and denies the relevance of the eternal questions.  As a result, we are reaping a whirlwind of distractions, more and more of these are negative life destroyers.  Substance abuse, greed, the thirst for political power, narcissistic behaviors, hateful name calling, abortion on demand, the popularity drive, acceptable life losses for others, the avoidance of meaningful relationships and any sense of a shared destiny, all are destroying the young and the old among us.  None of us are totally immune but it would seem that unless we are dealing in some way with the eternal questions, we are adrift, tossed to-and-fro without a rudder.
Human history is replete with examples of those persons who have limited their distractions in order to attempt a connection beyond the routine of life.  Some of these persons retired voluntarily to a place of solitude while others were driven by circumstances to a place where distractions were few and the big questions remained.  They may have retired to a desert, a cave or a monastery, thereby trashing what is normal, making themselves a laughing stock, a supposed waste of a life.  In our present secular world, the seeming plight of these folk is ridiculed as failure and lunacy.  Secularism tells us that we only have one opportunity at life so be all you can be, grab as much as you can and forget about the rules.  Self-sacrifice is no longer a noble ideal and it is alien to the playbook of humanistic secularism which is fouling most all western cultures.  America may well be the last man standing but we too are on the verge of our demise on November 8.
This senior has a profound faith in the American voter to trash the distractions.  We will not be suckered.  Hillary, keep mouthing them for just thirty more days and then America will put you to bed.  We shall vote for no more progressive secularism; no more scandals; no more constant lying to the people; no more disregard for the Constitution; no more caterpillar economy; no more unholy Supreme Court; no more globalists meddling in America; no more anarchy on the streets; no more politicized Justice Department, IRS, Federal Reserve and VA; no more open borders; no more unrestricted trade that panders to big corporate donors; no more feeding off we the taxpayers; no more radical Muslim inspired death on our streets; no more gun control and finally, no more promises from your forked tongue.
G.Goslaw
Landers, CA