Thoughts

 As I write this today, I am full of many thoughts about things that are going on, both personally but also in the wider sphere of society.  As I mentioned about my dissertation, I am at a place now where I can start writing more again here and exploring other topics.  But it has been so long since I have written regularly that I have a bit of brain fog about what to say, so we will just go with the proverbial flow here and I will speak randomly of things I have been thinking about. 

Earlier this week, the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore was hit by a large cargo barge, and the entire thing just collapsed into the Chesapeake Bay.  Although it has been about 50 or more years since I have been on that bridge, I know it well - growing up as a kid I spent about a year in Baltimore with many of our family who lived there then.  Back in the day (from the late 1950s until the early 1980s approximately), Baltimore (in particular the western fringes of the city closer to Catonsville and Ellicott City) was a haven for many West Virginians.  The lure of good-paying jobs compelled many from our state to move there, and our family was no exception.  The areas between Wilkins Avenue and West Pratt Street could be called the "Hillbilly Ghetto" then, as it was populated by a lot of West Virginians.  But this too was a major trend in many cities - Cincinatti, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, DC, and other large metropolitan areas adjacent to the Appalachians drew many people from West Virginia, Kentucky, and even Tennessee to them.  In all honesty, in northern West Virginia, the boom industries that originally supplied good incomes for many people (coal, the railroads, timber) were in decline, and people needed to survive.  So, in the aftermath of World War II many West Virginians headed to the cities for work.  It was equally true elsewhere in the nation as well - my dad's family in southern Alabama moved to Jacksonville and Pensacola down there for many of the same reasons. Although the greatest uptick in migration to the cities was after World War II, there was a large migration of West Virginians heading for Baltimore and other urban centers as far back as the Great Depression.  As my family and other mountain transplants began to become more stable and affluent, they would do one of two things eventually.  First, many would eventually save a nice nest egg to retire back home, like my late Aunt Angie and Uncle Charles did.  Second, for those who chose to stay as well as their kids and grandkids who were born and raised in the city, there was a move out of the "Hillbilly Ghetto" to the suburbs, and I have a lot of cousins that still live in the outlying communities of Baltimore to this day.  When that started happening, the cities unfortunately began to decline as other groups moved into those areas and bad Democrat-led bureaucracies became more corrupt and hastened the decline of those old communities as crime rose and prices for basic good followed.  The communities many of my family lived in back in the day in Baltimore are no longer recognizable - urban decay has destroyed many of those areas now.  Recently, when I was doing a street-view look on Google Maps at the old neighborhoods, I was shocked to see on camera a Black guy near an old bar my uncles used to hang out urinating on a street sign!  This was in broad daylight and there for everyone to see too.  Yet, he more than likely got away with doing it because in all honesty the apathy foisted upon society today by corrupt rich career politicians is sickening.  While they will spend millions in taxpayer dollars locking up old grannies who may have been taking pictures of the Capital on January 6, 2021, as well as targeting everyone from devout Catholics to a former President, many of these same hacks will let real crime run rampant on the streets of major cities.  San Francisco, for instance, has become the biggest toilet/gay bathhouse in the country, and many who have been there have accounted that you cannot even walk three feet in any direction on certain streets there without risking stepping in a pile of human feces or on a drug needle.  But that is Leftist Utopia - no, those pesky Catholics and pro-lifers are the bigger "threat to democracy" according to such crooks as that dried-up old California raisin Maxine Waters, or the pimp-daddy from Georgia, Hank Johnson.  Then you have clowns such as Steve Cohen in Tennessee calling the nation of Israel "genocidal" (mind you, he is supposed to be Jewish himself) while at the same time getting his own palms greased by his buddy Erdogan in Turkey, who is really advocating genocide against Armenians and other minorities there.  And don't get me started on those idiots that make up "the Squad" - they are almost laughable if they weren't potentially so dangerous in their rhetoric.  Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi's emasculated lapdog in the Senate, openly calls for violence against Supreme Court Justices while at the same time calling Donald Trump a "dangerous insurrectionist."  On and on that goes, with more career politicians and grandstanders acting hypocritically when they themselves are the worst examples of human sin on the planet.  But they are OK, right?  I mean, when you have megalomaniacal billionaires like George Soros, Klaus Schwab, and Bill Gates funding you, money can fix everything.  The takeaway from this is that many so-called "progressives" are actually the most ambivalent against true progress, and they know it - they don't really care about the rhetoric they spout, as the majority of them want one thing and one thing only - complete power.  And, ironically, they are not even confined to one political party either - alongside crazy Leftists like AOC are nominal Republican politicians (Michael Knowles calls them "squishes") who are just as bad, just as corrupt, and they have been in power for a long time, and it has gone to their heads - those are the Liz Cheneys, the Adam Kinsingers, the Lindsay Grahams, the Dan Crenshaws, and others (with their Democrat cohorts, they are collectively called the Uniparty).  Maybe it is time to clean house in DC - it is long overdue.  Any rate, I apologize for getting off on a political discourse, but it's been in my head the past few days and I needed to vent it.  Thank you for allowing me that. 

I have been thinking about the old days a lot, as the unthinkable has happened to me.  At 54, I have become the elder now, as many of those who were before me are now gone - I just lost my last grandparent a couple of months ago, and yesterday it was two years since my mother passed away. When I was a kid, my grandparents were all my age now, and there were still people around from the 1800s then.  I belong to Generation X, perhaps the last actual generation that more or less carried on the values and norms of earlier generations - the Millennials just didn't care, and Gen Z is putting forth a noble effort to recover some things, but they don't quite understand the perspective like my generation did.  My generation recalls vividly the evils of communism, and we saw it fall too - I remember the dissolution of the Soviet Union, as well as the courageous Chinese student movement in Tianmen Square.  I remember Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement in Poland, and how it transformed the country.  And, there was still a vivid memory of atrocities like the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, and we learned about those things in school.  Back in the day, I actually considered myself a "liberal" because I loved classic jazz and read things such as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.  I loved Black history then because it was taught right - it highlighted the accomplishments of many Black figures in our nation's history, but did so within the context that they were part of American History and contributed rich things to it as the legacy of our nation.  We respected the flag, we valued faith in God (even if we didn't always practice it), and many of us aspired to college education, and making our own contributions to American society.  We were not a perfect generation by any means - unfortunately Madonna was a product of our times then! - but we at least had scruples.  I look at the world now and wonder to myself "what the hell happened??"  The violence, the division, the craziness of today's society has me shaking my head in shock.  Thankfully, this "woke" nonsense being pushed now was not a thing back in the day - sure, it existed on the radical fringe, but no one took it seriously then as many of us were just content to be left alone to be free to live our lives.  But not anymore - if you say the wrong pronoun, you can be sued by a greedy attorney representing a crazy woman with a fat gut, blue hair, and a nose ring.  If you say you are Christian and you believe in the dignity of all humanity as individuals, it gets you labeled as a "racist" or worse (which is odd, being you just said you respected their dignity as an individual and that skin color is not a measure of character, yet somehow that is "racist??").  Common things that really shouldn't generate controversy - a glass of milk, a cup of coffee, algebra, correct grammar, and being on time for your job - are now labeled as "oppression of the patriarchy."   And now, a woman can identify as a man, and vice versa, and male perverts can read stories dressed as women to your kindergarteners. When I was in high school, not only was all this foolish BS ridiculous, but if you said things like that then you may be referred to psychological therapy (which still should be the case).  What in hell happened to America??  So much more could be said here, but we will leave it at that. 

As I get older, I long more and more for yesteryear, and at times looking at what is happening in society makes me wish time travel were a thing.  As smart and rich as Elon Musk is, I don't think even he could pull off that invention though.  We cannot reverse time, and the 1980s will not come back as they were then.  But I believe there can be a restoration of some level of sanity and decency, and thankfully now many people share that hope.  I only hope our "overlords" - corrupt politicians and psychotic billionaire oligarchs - don't lead us to our destruction as a civilization before that happens.  When we are now engaged in a new "Cold War" and we are now the bad guys, that is sobering - in a famous rant in the 1960s, Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev declared to Kennedy "we will bury you."  Ironically, as the Russians now become saner, the US and Europe seem to be descending into a self-inflicted psychosis.  Maybe we should come to the realization that Vladimir Putin may not be our worst enemy - we are our own worst enemy.  

Thank you for allowing me to share.  As I said, I wasn't sure where this was going to go, but it felt good to talk about things.  See you later and have a blessed Easter season if you are my fellow Christians celebrating it this weekend. 

The Adventure of Writing a Dissertation

 As many of you reading this already know, since the end of 2020 I have been finally pursuing that doctoral degree I have been after for a while.  After a bit of a disappointment with not getting into Catholic University of America like I originally desired, my counsel with our former parish priest, Fr. John Jicha, led me to look into Liberty University, which offers online doctoral programs.  I applied in the Spring of 2020, was accepted, and started my first term in Fall 2020.  After successfully completing three years of classroom work - and maintaining a 3.89 GPA - I entered the dissertation phase last summer.  In the process, I was accepted into an online honor society (Omega Nu Lambda - an honor society for online students) and I also at the halfway point of my program was awarded a postgraduate Executive Certificate in History, both of which I received in 2022.  It has had its challenges - due to the loss of both parents during the past few years, as well as going through a divorce and also facing some financial challenges - but I am quite happy with how it is coming together.  So, I wanted to share a little of that journey with you.

As anyone will tell you who has either achieved a Ph.D. or is in the process of completing one, a program like this is in phases.  One phase of it has to do with classroom work.  These are courses that are both practical in nature as well as helping the student focus on an area of study for their final dissertation. In many ways, those courses are little different from classwork completed in a Master's program, although the research is a bit more intensive.  The second phase of my particular program was a series of 4 comprehensive reading courses, which focus on different areas in which you read a LOT of books for a particular period in history and then produce annotated bibliographies on what is read.  That phase is the most tedious and intensive of the program, and each of the 4 courses end with an essay exam focusing on a question that relates to the time period.  The final phase is actually the dissertation phase, and for me it is divided into three parts.  The first part of the dissertation phase entails gathering research and creating one's historiographic analysis, a methodology, and settling on questions the dissertation will address.  The second part is actually drafting the chapters of the dissertation itself, and can take up to several months.  The final part before defending and publishing is the revision stage, in which your faculty chair and at least two other faculty readers review each chapter, present what they feel needs work and revisions, and then after that is taken care of the actual manuscript is assembled from the revised chapters.  To be honest, it is a lot of work, especially in the first steps, but it does get easier as one goes along and understands their own material enough to defend it later.  At this point, I am at the early stages of the revision process, and have several months on that to go yet before being ready to publish and defend.  I ask for your prayers, as it is an involved process, but so far I feel good about everything. 

So, what is a dissertation?  Essentially, it entails the fruit of all the education you have had - undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral - and it is essentially a book for all intents.  It can average up to 300 pages (approximately the length of mine) and it is organized into chapters based on the research questions and also the other factors that contribute to the narrative.  A Master's thesis is similar but not the same length - I personally was not required to complete a Master's thesis in my graduate work, as my program then had a comprehensive exam at the end covering all the coursework in the program.  Many doctoral candidates do go on to publish their dissertations as a marketable book, but for the purpose of defending it the manuscript is published as a one-sided hardbound book of which a copy will be placed in the university library.  Obviously, the curiosity of those reading this will pique as to what my dissertation is about, and I will go into that now.

As my Ph.D. is in History (or will be soon), I originally narrowed my choices down to three areas of particular interest to me.  The first was Appalachian History, given I am a native of the region and the local history of my region did present a good opportunity.  The second area I had an interest in was late Roman Antiquity, meaning the last 100 years before the Western Roman Empire fell in AD 476, and then the subsequent events that followed up to Charlemagne's conquering of the Lombards in the 9th century.  However, the focus I settled upon was World War II History, which has always fascinated me.  Therefore, my dissertation has to do with the ideological influences that shaped the Nazis, and in essence I focused on four areas - occultism, eugenics/Darwinian evolution, political influences (particularly the Geopolitik of Friedrich Ratzel and Karl Haushofer, as well as the influence of groups like the Freikorps and Wandervogel), and finally philosophical influences (Kant, Nietzsche, Gobineau, H.S. Chamberlain).  Of course, as my faculty chair pointed out, there was to be something more original as a dimension to the narrative, and upon examining it I fell back on some earlier ideas that caught my attention from my Master's program - primary from Biblical hermeneutics and from Personalist Philosophy.  The hermeneutical aspect of it is also anthropological/sociological, as it entails a group "story" - a narrative of the worldview of particular group that centers around a series of ideas called central narrative convictions, or CNCs.  CNCs provide answers to four basic questions:

1. who are we?

2. where are we?

3. What's wrong?

4. What's the remedy?

That idea came to me from a book by Pentecostal theologian Kenneth Archer, whose book A Pentecostal Hermeneutic deal with these questions, which he referenced and borrowed from an earlier book by Brian Walsh and H. Richard Middleton entitled A Transforming Vision.  CNCs shape the narrative, or "story," of a particular group, and the group does not have to be good - even evil groups like the Nazis had CNCs that shaped their own narrative, albeit we would understand as a warped worldview on their part.  The second aspect of this has to do with what is unique to the Nazis as a movement as contrasted what they assimilated from earlier influences, and for this I relied on an idea I saw in Dr. John F. Crosby's book The Selfhood of the Human Person.  Dr. Crosby is the Chair of the Philosophy Department at my alma mater, Franciscan University of Steubenville, and the essence of his argument are quite fundamental.  Each individual - and in this application, each group - has two sets of attributes.  First, there are attributes which are unique to the individual or particular group, and we call these incommunicables.  Secondly there are shared or borrowed attributes common to either the individuals within a group or a group within a particular ideological sphere, and these are called communicables or universals. Like the CNCs, these attributes in both cases are not limited to just groups we consider good, as evil groups have them too.  This constitutes the second question of my dissertation - what did the Nazis possess that was unique to them, and what did they borrow from their predecessors from which they evolved?  Another question has to do with conflicting things - why the Nazis would later persecute some of their most influential allies and influences (notably Ernst Rohm, Karl Haushofer, and Rudolf von Sebottendorf)?  This is not a comprehensive summary of the entire dissertation, but it will give you an idea of what I am working on.  It also fits into what the dissertation process is all about too - it is taking things I have learned, making proper applications of them, and thus the dissertation serves as a climactic fruit of my total education.  And, in the case of my topic, it is total - this is an area I have been interested in since I was a kid in all honesty, and I came into the dissertation phase with a full background in study of this topic.  As a matter of fact, one of the chapters was an extension of a class project I did for an earlier course. Doing this entails a lot, and to be honest I have been challenged with the angles I have had to take in the final product of this whole thing.  But, it also has rewards too - the biggest reward is finally being finished with formal education after almost 50 years of it from kindergarten to my Ph.D.  And, frankly, at almost 55 years of age I am ready to retire as a student.  Hopefully in the near future my classroom work will be in front of the class teaching it rather than sitting at a desk learning it.  But, a curious mind is always learning, and we should all be lifelong students in a less formal capacity anyway. 

Upon completing and being conferred with a Ph.D., I plan on publishing the dissertation as a book for wider audiences, as well as utilizing the research for other projects - my earlier Genesis study could benefit from some of this material as I revise that later and make it a published book as well.  For those who may be interested in this, I will keep you posted. 

Thank you for allowing me to give you a glimpse into my Ph.D. journey, and I covet and appreciate your continued prayers for me.  See you next time!  

First Quarter of 2024 - Catching Up

 Due to my Ph.D. work, I have not been writing as much as I used to.  At this point, I am in the dissertation stage of my doctorate, and if all goes well, I will anticipate completing it by the end of this year. I will reflect more on that momentarily but wanted to catch up on a few other things first. 

To summarize, 2023 ended much better than it started, and although we had a few hiccups in January, for the most part the year has gone smoothly - not perfect, but at least not catastrophic.  I did finally contract COVID at the end of February, but I survived - it was really no worse than a flu, and I am no worse for the wear from it.  Barbara had caught the virus from a medical office she worked at here in town because the doctors there were frankly careless and made people work when they were sick, thus creating a huge risk of infection.  Therefore, Barbara caught it, and then spread it to me, and I found out I had it after a routine visit to an urgent care clinic for a tooth infection - I tested positive for COVID and was given the proper treatment.  I had noticed a day or two before going there that I was more fatigued, and I had also been getting a little bit of sinus pressure.  Knowing Barbara was sick, I figured I may be at high risk myself, and I was.  Again though, I survived without vaccination, without any Fauci nonsense, and I am better today.  And life goes on. 

2024 has also been the year of many deaths - both my last surviving grandfather and his wife (not my grandmother as he married this one long after he and my grandmother divorced) passed on in January and February respectively.  Grandad was 98, and although there were some family issues and we were not as close over the years, it does create a realization now that I am officially the last surviving descendant of my immediate family.  Having celebrated my 54th birthday recently, I am also faced with the realization that I am not as young as I used to be.  I found that out a couple of days ago when I reorganized the shed outside and my back is still feeling that now.  It is a lot to digest.  And, with a lot of change happening in the past 4 years, I have many questions.  I guess the final verdict is that I have to trust God - he brought me this far after all, so why wouldn't I?  I does get a little frustrating waiting on answers though, but when I look back one day at this I will probably understand the reasons behind things.  And, that leads me to another very good insight I was given during my COVID experience by our parish priest.

Fr. Timothy Grassi is a short little guy with a big heart, and before he was assigned to our current parish, he was actually the priest in my hometown of Parsons, which gives us a lot to talk about.  When I found out I had COVID, I emailed him asking him to pray for us.  In his response, he said something so profound that I plan on remembering it for a long time.  He told me basically that God allowed the illness as a way of saying it's time to rest - I would have never thought of that, but it does make perfect sense.  Even in sickness - a fruit of the Fall in Genesis 3 - God has purpose in other words.  He uses our own biology to speak to us, which just reaffirms the fact that he created the universe and everything in it.  Symptoms our body gives us act as indicators that we need to make a change sometimes, and God designed our bodies in such a way that the symptoms end up being a divine revelation as well as a natural process.  I may incorporate this into my earlier Genesis study, as I could spend more time on this.  I guess the lesson is that if we really want to hear from God, we should maybe listen more closely - even our own bodies talk to us.  Really good insight, courtesy of our wonderful parish priest. 

I mentioned that I have been doing a lot of reorganization in the house, and so far we have made amazing progress.  I reorganized the kitchen cabinets for one thing - I have a new spice cabinet I bought last month, and thus it opened up space over the stove to store paper cups and plates.  I also managed to clean out underneath the sink, and got that organized - that was a project I had been wanting to tackle for some time, and thankfully it turned out wonderfully.  The big project however was the shed outside, which for some reason was a mess due to weaker small bins collapsing in there.  I spent the better part of three hours this past Wednesday repacking stuff in larger bins, and it sort of reminded me that I am not as young as I once was - trying to lift those heavy bins into place wreaked havoc on my lower back, and I feel it today.  I have had back issues off and on for at least 10 years now - on one occasion when we still lived in Lakeland, I was out of commission for a week when my back went totally out on me.  As Fr. Grassi taught me, it is a way for our bodies to tell us something that could be God's message to us - take care of ourselves and don't stress out over things.  Stress of course in this case is physical stress - when your body reaches a certain age, you have to be more nuanced in the way you handle things.  That is a lesson I am still learning, but it makes it harder when many of these jobs are things only you can do, and thus the risk for physical issues becomes more pronounced.  However, I prove resilient, and we get things accomplished despite circumstances.  Thanks be to God for that too. 

Now, let's talk about this doctorate.  I made it to my second dissertation course - 988 - and I also now have the initial drafts of all my chapters completed.  With those taken care of, I have entered an extensive revision phase for my dissertation that could take anywhere from 6 to 9 months, depending on what extent revisions are needed.  The next step after the revisions will be preparing for the defense, publication, and presentation of my bound copy to the university.  Once I successfully defend, then I will be conferred a Ph.D.  In all honesty, I am ready to wrap this up, as I have been in school since I was 5 years old and I am ready to retire as a student - although I had a few intermittent breaks between my undergraduate and Master's programs regarding a formal degree, during that interregnum in my education I was still actively learning. It was during that time I completed my paralegal certificate and some other professional coursework for jobs and such, and thus I have not had a completion of my education since kindergarten.  This Ph.D. for me is my climax to my education, and upon successful completion of that I am done with formal education.  I may still take a course or two here for professional development, but only on an as-needed basis.  In all honesty, much of this should have been finished years ago, but for most of my 30s I spent my time working and achieving a level of stability so I had no time then, hence the 16-year gap (1996-2012) between finishing my BA and starting my MA.  Fortunately, I only had two years between completing my MA and starting my Ph.D., so we have been continuously finishing degrees for about 12 years.  I do have plans with my dissertation once I successfully defend it and get my doctorate conferred.  For one thing, I want to turn it into a marketable book, so upon completion of studies I will format it accordingly and submit it for publication with my own publisher (Lulu Press has been fantastic over the past several years for my publishing needs, including a multi-volume collection of all these blog posts over the 14 years I have been writing).  Then, I can pursue other writing projects, such as my Genesis study as a book as well as a history of American dance bands, which means turning my hobby into a scholastic endeavor.  In all honesty, I plan on being busy for a while. 

Aside from getting the house in order, recovering from illness, losing family, and my schooling, my life has been otherwise uneventful.  There are things that are happening I will discuss at another time when they will be more appropriate to address, but for now those areas are still largely under construction.  With my personal things now discussed, let me address our national issues a little. 

As anyone who knows me will verify, I am fairly conservative in my political views.  I am conservative because I see a divinely authored natural law that dictates certain things are supposed to be certain ways.  For instance, if you are born a man, you cannot become a woman (and vice versa) - for a devoutly Catholic person such as myself, this whole "transgender" issue is heretical in that it asserts that God is somehow imperfect and capable of making mistakes.  These issues also embody an ancient heresy called Gnosticism - denying the tangible for some esoteric nonsense.  This makes the ideology of transgenderism also somewhat occultic, and as my dissertation shows that makes it dangerously close to some ideologies the Nazis had.  For instance, when you have weirdos such as Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels (a Volkisch occultist, former priest, and early mentor of Hitler) taking Biblical terms such as sodomy and radically redefining them, it causes some issues.  It is also true with how the precursors of this transgender movement - people such as Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and Magnus Hirschfeld - viewed homosexuality as an "evolving third gender."  With pronoun misuse and gender confusion today, you see that ideology permeating society more and more.  I know of at least three individuals who "came out" as homosexual and then all of a sudden were transgender, and it is largely based on whatever demonic spirit drives the agendas pushing this garbage.  One of them is a fellow alumnus of the university where I received my undergraduate degree, and the other two are more high-profile - the actress Ellen (who now calls herself "Elliot") Page and the freakshow who bankrupted a major beer company, Dylan Mulvaney.  Page and Mulvaney are going to some pretty ridiculous extremes with their conflicted identities, and in all honesty it is turning into a huge freakshow.  This, along with the labeling of things certain individuals who don't like them as "racist" due to bad identity politics (now, if you don't like something such as coffee, declare it "racist" and every mainstream media outlet will have their noses so far up your butt it will feel like a reverse bowel movement), has led to a serious rift in our society.  Now, also in the name of "climate change," many of these same idiots are trying to eliminate carbon dioxide (which plants need to survive, incidentally) as well as destroying pieces of priceless art.  And, now you have the outright support of actual terrorists - a lot of spoiled rich young liberal ding-dongs are actually protesting for Hamas, who last October killed close to 1300 Jewish people in Israel.  All of these things together constitute a warped mindset called "wokeism," and it is the real pandemic which is doing far more damage than COVID ever could.  Unless this is brought to heel soon, Western Civilization is in mortal danger of collapse once the loonies take over.  This is where we need divine intervention. And, there are a couple of other thoughts I want to address with this now.

A cursory reading of the press will show that over the past 20 or so years, the dictator Erdogan in Turkey has been getting more extreme in his rhetoric.  It is as if he wants a restored Ottoman khalifate with himself as leader, and he is stopping at nothing to make that happen.   While many think Putin is the ultimate bad guy in world leadership (in reality, he isn't), many ignore Erdogan because he fits their agenda.  Erdogan, if he had his way, would wipe every Armenian off the face of the earth - he is a genocidal freak.  Yet, what is so weird about him now is that all of a sudden he is supporting Hamas also, and defending Palestinians while threatening Israel.  I called that years ago, because that is essentially Ezekiel 38-39 playing out.  Erdogan is also hypocritical - he condemns Israel for "genocide" against Palestinians, when in reality his own nation was guilty of the greatest genocide of an indigenous population back a century ago.  No one seems to mention the Armenian Genocide much, do they?  This despite the fact that Erdogan's Azeri "soul bro," Aliev, is carrying out his own genocide against Armenians by attacking the Nagorno-Karabagh corridor (also known as Artsakh in Armenian, and traditionally a part of Armenian territory).   There are a couple of very strong observations I want to make here.  If Erdogan is concerned about Israel, he has two problems.  For one, Jews are actually indigenous to Israel - Turks are not indigenous to Turkey.  Secondly, he accuses Israel of "genocide" (an allegation with no basis in fact) while at the same time supporting actual genocide against Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians in his own country, all of whom are indigenous to the geographical area called "Turkey" now.  I see that same attitude with other Turks even in the US, particularly leftist political pundit and loudmouth Cenk Uygur of "The Young Turks."  Cenk loves throwing the word "genocide" around when it comes to Gaza, but then seethes in anger at the mere mention of the genocidal legacy of his own people.  That being said, I have a couple of further observations.

First, I am not what you consider to be a "Zionist."  I have some Jewish ancestry, I believe that Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people, and I think Israel as a state has every right to exist.  However, I also think that many so-called "Palestinians" come from two origins.  Many of them are the descendants of Arab Beduin tribes from the Arabian desert who came with Mohammed to conquer much of the Middle East and Islamize it in the 7th century.  However, this is not true of that entire population, as many "Palestinian" communities in Israel do share common DNA with their Jewish neighbors - my theory on this is that they may be actual Israelites by ancestry - could be even part of the lost 10 tribes in all honesty - who were Arabized and Islamized over the centuries.  That means that the land of Israel is their home as well, and by all means they also have a birthright there.  Bottom line, if one really studies that intensely, the conclusion is that the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is a sibling squabble then, albeit a very intense and dangerous one.  That means that meddling globalists in the West may need to keep their noses out of it.  Secondly, because I am not technically a "Zionist," I also don't agree with all of Israel's policies either - for instance, their support of Aliev's regime in Azerbaijan against Armenians is a bad policy move, no different than the way our current administration supports a corrupt neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine right now.  Jews and Armenians should by all indicators be natural allies, in that they suffered many of the same atrocities over the centuries and have a lot more in common with each other than they do with anyone else.  Yet, because Israel supports Azerbaijan against Armenia, that has damaged relations between these two great nations.  Hopefully, Erdogan's genocidal psychosis and his close ties to Aliev will begin to change Israel's policies in this regard, and maybe the Israeli leadership will wake up to reality on that one.  I am also not overly thrilled with the way some Orthodox Jewish communities in Israel treat Christian communities - I have heard stories of Armenians, Copts, Greeks, and others being spit on as they leave their churches by Orthodox Jewish rabblerousers, and also how Israel at times targets innocent Christian communities who are trapped in the crossfire.  While Hamas and similar groups are corrupt and evil and do use innocent victims as human shields, that is no excuse for Israel to randomly target areas where Christians may live.  That is something Israel does need to sort out.  

For now, that is all I have to share, but hopefully I can be back soon with more insights.  God bless everyone who gets to read this, and see you soon!