The Dread of the Crossroads

 There are many, many things going through my mind right now as I write today, and I want to tackle this eclectic mess of thoughts as organized as I possibly can.  Therefore, please bear with me. 

The first thing is an item of national news interest.  This past Friday, independent Presidential Candidate Bobby Kennedy Jr. came out and endorsed Donald Trump's campaign.  In all honesty, this is a very positive thing, as it shows that politically Americans are really waking up to the "woke" BS that has been permeating our political discourse for some time.  As everyone knows, Bobby Kennedy Jr. is the nephew of JFK, as well as the son of RFK Sr.  While somewhat more left-leaning on a lot of things, he also is a common-sense individual who sees the bigger picture, and much like Trump he is a political outsider despite being the scion of a prominent Democrat political family. What we have here now is a coalition ticket of people from all parts of the political spectrum who have a common purpose - the greater good for America and its future.  The current Democrat running, Kamala Harris, is so out-of-touch with common people that if she were to win, I would honestly question the sanity of our nation.  Her running mate, Tim Walz, is even a bigger threat to our way of life, as he is essentially a Maoist who embraces communism and all the totalitarian garbage that comes with it.  Worse still, Harris is also the sitting VP, and has been for almost 4 years.  On her watch, the nation has suffered greatly, and I feel it personally.  Electing this woman to the highest office of the land would be a mitigated disaster, and although there have been many on both sides of the political spectrum who lament about the "end of democracy" if either candidate is elected, the reality is much more imminent.  If radical leftists take over the governing structure of the US, we are in deep doo-doo, in all honesty.  If the disastrous policies of the senile old codger known as Joe Biden are any indication, it will possibly be the end of the United States as we know it.  Therefore, it will take a coalition of people from all ideological stripes who understand the gravity of the situation to avert such a disaster, and Trump's allying with Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard, and others may be America's saving grace.  The good news is that a coalition campaign often has favorable odds to win, so this may be the blessing in disguise everyone has been praying for.  The national situation has bearings on my own personal circumstances too, and that is where I wanted to go from here today.

In all honesty, the past couple of years have been rather uncertain for me - with limited income, it has proven challenging to even keep up my rent, and as I write this I am dealing with that issue now.  There are a lot of intricacies entailed with this situation in my own personal affairs, so I wanted to spend some time unpacking some fundamental concerns I have now.  Again, please bear with me on this. 

Imagine if you will driving on a country road that is unfamiliar - it is a road you haven't been on before but maybe for some reason you have to take it as a detour or something.  You are driving along and you come to a crossroads intersection.  Not being familiar with the area, you have a decision to make - which way do you turn.  Problem is, you also do not have a map, GPS, Waze, or Google Maps available because your phone is not picking up a signal.  So, you sit there wondering where each direction is going to take you.  If you go the wrong way, God only knows where you will end up and you may end up in an isolated area where you run out of gas and are stranded. While in this day and age the likelihood of such a literal situation is minimal, when you look at it metaphorically it describes life, especially when you are faced with circumstances that warrant a quick decision but you don't have a clue as to what to do.  That is what uncertainty is, and you fear the unknown - we all do.  And, when you don't have that map or a good set of directions to show you the way, it increases the probability that you will make a wrong turn.  And, when things are critical, there is a zero room for error in deciding.  As Christians, we rely on God's guidance, but even that is not as cut-and-dry as we would prefer.  God's silence in those situations can be deafening, and it can lead one to get upset with God.  I am here to tell you that this is a normal human limitation and don't be ashamed to admit you get frustrated with God's response - we live by the deadlines of others on this earth, and it would be nice if on occasion that the same God who created all time and space would work within the time and space he expects us to live in.  Have any of you been there?  Believe me, I have - I have gotten so frustrated with God that there have been times I have called him every name in the book - it is ugly, but I also have to be honest because this can drive one nuts.  Your rent is overdue for instance, and you dread any day having a sheriff knock on your door to throw you out of your house, and you have no one to go to and no place to go.  That is not a good situation to be in. Honestly, I don't have the concise answer to give anyone about this, because I am hoping for answers myself.  The "church talk" you hear often with this often feels dismissive and crass, as others do not live your life and you want answers and not religious jargon to solve the issue.  This is what makes many "TV preachers" so disgusting, vile, and aggravating - you can "blab and grab" and confess positively all you want, but nine chances out of ten it won't work.  They claim that the Bible tells you to "claim" things, and it sounds good, but then you try it. Usually what happens is you end up more depressed and discouraged because those formulae do not work.  While the staunch faith of others can actually be encouraging, there is a difference between genuine faith and the jargon and garbage you hear from neo-Charismatic ding-dongs who like spouting crap they hear off TBN when they themselves don't have a clue. That leads me into a little soapboxing now as there are a couple of important observations I need to make here. 

First, we all know those Charismatic megachurches.  When I lived in Lakeland, there was one of them on Main Street across from where my mother lived for many years that fully bought into the whole 'name it and claim it" message.  They taught that if the right high-profile celebrity evangelist just laid hands on you, or if you pretended to speak in tongues while "claiming" things you wanted, that you would have personal victory in your life.  And, if that victory did not come, they also bought into the cruel extreme of saying something must be wrong with you then if God didn't answer those prayers or you somehow didn't speak whatever desire you had into existence.  Problem with this is that I know some of those people - they are devout, they pray, they believe without question, and they know how to "play the game" in church.  They know what angle to fall when they are "slain in the spirit," how to make garbled tongues-talk have the right rhythms, etc.  Yet. many of them suffer too.  Their faith is not in question obviously, but rather something else - many of them even get into fist-fights with unseen evil spirits they believe are stealing blessings from them, and while it does feel good and gets out some built-up frustration, does it work?  Another observation I often see at some of those big megachurches that teach this junk is the parking lots - when you drive by such a "church," how many BMWs, Rolls Royces, and Lambourghinis do you see?  Probably not many, unless you look at the pastor and church staff reserved parking spots - they seem to be really "blessed" don't they?   And, where are all the news reports of miraculous healings and resurrections from the dead??  No matter how much Rodney Howard-Browne cackles like Kamala Harris, or how many guts Todd Bentley punches (all "in the Spirit" of course!), fact is most of the cars you will see in those church parking lots are going to either be so rickety they could fall apart, or their drivers owe a huge debt on them which could be in the thousands of dollars - one layoff or family emergency and their car is repossessed.  That is the true picture of life. Now, I personally am not against miracles, healings, or financial blessing - God can definitely provide those if he wants to.  My concerns go a bit deeper. Let me elaborate.

Imagine you are a fairly intelligent and capable person.  You are efficient, organized, well-educated, and your resume looks amazing.  Yet, you lose your income and it doesn't seem like potential employers are knocking down your door, does it?  Then, funds start to run out, and you get behind on the rent you are paying too much for to begin with because the area you live in is over-priced yet offers few opportunities.  You are now in a vulnerable "red zone" of life, and you cannot afford to waste any time because there is a zero margin of error in regard to your situation.  So, you have decisions to make - you may be in a place where you are facing this all alone, and every time you try to ask for help you get a door slammed in your face - after a while, it gets very desperate.  You are now at that crossroads mentioned earlier.  You don't know where to turn, and God is your only help, yet for some reason he tends to be silent when you need him the most.  How does one deal with this?  I honestly wish I had those answers because I would share them with anyone who needs it, but I struggle too.  All I can say is to be persistent.  Let me explain that now.

The one thing that the "blab and grab" crowd gets right is that God has made promises, and his Word is supposed to be infallible and eternal.  But, at times, we feel as if we are somehow not qualified to get those promises, and that is where we need to know what Scripture actually says.  There seems to be a lot of places in the Bible that talk about contending for things, and my experience has taught me a couple of things.  First, what you are contending for needs to be realistic.  As some Fundamentalists accurately say, God is definitely not a vending machine where you insert a prayer and he farts out your blessing.  Rather, if you worked hard for something, then you can stake the claim on it.  For instance, you are in need of a job, and you have a proven track record of experience in your field.  Or, you have the proper education to get that job you want.  I have found out that getting doors slammed in one's face constantly can lead to a lot of broken and bruised noses, and after a while you can only take so much.  And, we are not alone - remember Genesis 32:22-32?  If you recall that, Jacob was in a mess - he was fearing for his life and he was afraid his brother Esau was going to basically kill him and all his family he was bringing back from Egypt.  So, in the middle of the night, he is obviously not able to sleep due to the fear and worry he is experiencing, so he decides to take a nightly stroll.  He is grabbed by a huge figure, and a struggle ensues.  It doesn't take Jacob long to realize an angel of God was engaging in this struggle with him, so he grabs the angel, and demands, "Bless me now!"  And, it happens.  Turns out the reunion with Esau is actually a warm one, and they make up.  And, Jacob (now called Israel, meaning "one who prevails with God") becomes the father of the very nation God would use to save the rest of humanity.  The takeaway from this is quite simple really.  Although one attribute of God is that he is omniscient (all-knowing), for some reason he has to be reminded of what he promises us, and that can be an intense experience.  I have had my own wrestles with God in which I cussed God up oneside and down the other, and I have even threatened to stop praying, etc., to get his attention.  I did that in circumstances I knew I deserved better, and I wanted God to honor his promises, especially Philippians 4:19 ("He shall supply all of our needs according to his riches in glory.").  Over the years, I have had many such exchanges, and if anyone would hear them, they could get ugly sometimes.  But, we always make up and reconcile, and I believe God is big enough to handle my outbursts when I am upset.  In all honesty, even as I write this now I am feeling a bit frustrated with God, and I am talking to myself more than anyone right now because maybe in writing this the direction I am seeking for a very important decision will reveal itself.  And, that leads me to another point of the discussion. 

Do you ever get so frustrated that you felt like God was deaf?  The more you pray, the more deafening the silence, and that is uncomfortable especially when a situation looms before you that you really need guidance or provision for. We are human beings, and we have limits, and thus we expect God to hear us. I have often sarcastically even asked God if he wanted me to bloodlet to get his attention.  Those times have been way too frequent in my own life, and I am ready for a change.  I am at a crossroads myself, and just want direction - the direction as to what I should do would be more than sufficient to answer my prayers.  I guess I am writing this to tell you that you are not alone, as many of us have been there.  Keep contending, and especially if it is something you know rightly is yours, and in time it may happen.  I am stepping out on a lot of faith right now to say that, I will be honest with you.  But, I am not going to be like those snakes on TBN who say to "blab and grab" everything and spout endless gibberish in the name of "tongues" either - if you lose your cool with God, it's OK - I am not going to judge that, and neither should anyone else.  Hopefully that will encourage someone today, so I will leave it there and will be back next week.  

Standing on the Banks

 This is one of those weeks where it is taking a lot of effort to absorb what has happened, but in a good way.  I wanted to just share a few thoughts today, as it does bear reflection.

As of yesterday (August 19) I am officially finished with my final degree program.  My last course, which essentially was the doctoral dissertation defense, took me all of 5 minutes to complete - all we had was what is called a "course requirements checklist," which is required at the start of every course in my program, and that took a whole 30 seconds to complete.  Then, there was a 3-question quiz which at most took a couple of minutes.  Within a short time afterward, the professor posted the final grade, and I was essentially done with my Ph.D. program.  While I do have the Ph.D. now, the official conferral of it and the receipt of my diploma together will come within the next six weeks.  It has been a journey which almost took 4 years - had it been another 5 days, it would have been 4 years exactly.  I have been told by a couple of people that I need to document my journey, and maybe I will at some point. But, for now, it is time to just take a couple of weeks to decompress before I move onto an article I will be writing for a scholarly journal.  However, today I just wanted to reflect a bit on the process and what it entailed getting me to this point. 

I started this Ph.D. program on August 24, 2020.  At the time, a lot of change was happening too, as on the negative I was starting proceedings of a divorce from my then-wife of 28 years, and I also was for the first week of the new program simultaneously taking a class to get my Maryland driver's license.  I have been aspiring to get a doctorate since my junior year of high school in all honesty, and if things would have been different, I would have probably achieved it 20 years earlier. But life takes some odd detours, and for most of my 30s I was focused on working and building my skills as an administrative professional - I did a fairly good stint in the mortgage/title industry back then, even essentially becoming the de facto office manager of an on-site title office in Pinellas County, FL, where we lived at the time. Opportunity had not visited me yet then, so I had to put plans for my graduate schoolwork on hold for several years.  It was approximately 16 years between getting my Bachelor's in 1996 from Southeastern University until starting my Master's at Franciscan University of Steubenville in 2012 (actually, I had originally gone back to Southeastern to do that, but due to a lot of other factors I transferred to Steubenville in 2014).  I was able to complete my Master's at Steubenville in 2018, and for a couple of years after I focused on work, paying bills, etc.  During that interim, I also did land my first paralegal job (I had earned a Paralegal Studies certificate in 2006) with a good company called Intrepid Paralegal Solutions here in Maryland: I still work with them now actually.  I was still focused on getting the Ph.D., and originally, I wanted to stay in a theology-based field until I found out that I wasn't accepted at Catholic University of America due to supposedly not having enough Theology credits in my Master's program (which was odd).  But God had other plans, and on the first Friday of Lent in 2020 I talked to my parish priest to get his counsel, and he more or less helped me make up my mind to pursue a History Ph.D. instead at Liberty University.  I enrolled in April 2020, was accepted quickly, and by June I found out I had been awarded a good financial aid package for the coming year.  So, I set my start date to the Fall 2020 semester, and before I knew it, I was back in school again.  While it was a different course of studies than I was used to with my previous academic programs, I took to it well and actually excelled.  By the time I finished the program a couple of weeks ago, I had a GPA of 3.89, which is really good, and to be honest I actually enjoyed the coursework.  Then, at the end of July, my faculty chair scheduled me to defend my 341-page dissertation I had spent a year working on, and I did that on August 5.  The defense went amazingly well, and I was also able to submit the dissertation manuscript to the university library (a requisite for receiving the degree) and it was accepted quickly.  While it was almost excruciatingly impatient for me to wait on everything, I received my final grades for everything yesterday and am just waiting for a formal conferral of my doctorate, although at this point I can be called "Doctor" now as I have essentially earned the honor.  I will add the end of this story when I receive the parchment in the mail in a few weeks, as that will be when I can finally and officially say I am Dr. David Thrower.  

So, people have had questions, and although normally I get a bit annoyed with such questions, I know they are well-meaning and I don't fault them.  Two very important ones have been asked about my accomplishment, and I want to address those briefly here. 

The first question was this - what now?  My post-doctoral plans are something I am not even sure about yet, so I am not exactly sure how to answer that at this point.  I now have a doctorate, and in all honestly, it qualifies me for work either as a staffer at a museum or other historical institution, or as an educator.  I am focusing more on the latter in all honesty, as I would love to teach at the university level.  I currently also am open to high school teaching/administration, but it comes with its own set of challenges - for one, you need state credentials to do that, and in all honesty, I don't want to necessarily go back to school again just for a teaching certificate, although I will if necessary.  A certification program would not be nearly as long, and it would aid in my career prospects, but there is also the fact I need to pay for my living expenses now and do need income.  I also understand the need to get more published too, and am actually being proactive at that now - my faculty chair who guided my dissertation process has invited me to write about a 25-page article for an academic journal he is editing and I will be working on that starting at the beginning of September.  The thing about publishing ventures though is that they don't pay, although being published does look great on a CV.  Therefore, for the time being, I am still doing freelance paralegal work until a door opens, and I am confident it will soon. I already have a possibility of a teaching position at a Jesuit high school in Baltimore I have been considered for, and am just waiting on that decision now.  In all honesty though, I am a bit uncertain about prospects at this point, but I know it is in God's hands, so I am doing my part and then letting him open the doors.  That is the short answer to this question.

The second question has to do with the topic of the dissertation itself.  I don't like talking technical stuff with my writing with anyone in all honesty, because I get this sort of reaction in many cases: 

I am not saying this to be pretentious or elitist, but when you are the researcher in a certain topic and no one else is familiar with it, it can be frustrating to explain it to people.  I am going to essentially give the "Reader's Digest Condensed Version" of the dissertation topic to those who were asking now, and hopefully it will suffice to satisfy any curiosity.

I had originally considered three areas of research, as there are three specific areas of historical topics I am interested in personally - Appalachian Studies, Late Roman Antiquity, and World War II.  I decided after taking what were called "Seminar" electives in my doctoral program in each area to focus on the latter.  Since I had been reading about most of this stuff since I was a kid, I decided to focus on the ideological background of the Nazis, and I decided to go a different route with it by focusing on what are called central narrative convictions (CNCs) of the early National Socialists.  Central narrative convictions essentially consist of the answers to questions that shape the narrative of any group.  I got the idea from a hermeneutics class I took at Southeastern back in 2012 under a professor, Kenneth J. Archer, who articulated the idea in the textbook for the course he authored himself.  While Archer coined the term "Central Narrative Convictions," he also borrowed the concept from a 1986 book entitled The Transforming Vision by authors H. Richard Middleton and Brian Walsh.  The four questions that Middleton and Marsh posed which Archer noted constructed the CNCs of a particular group (or the "story" of the group, as he termed it) are these:

1. Who are we?

2. Where are we? 

3. What's wrong?

4. What's the remedy?

These may look vaguely familiar for those who have read my articles over the past several years, because in all honesty they construct a brilliant model, and I am indebted to Dr. Archer for introducing it.  For the most part, it is the CNCs from those questions which construct the worldview of both a group and the individuals who comprise the group.  Then, taking this a step further, I drew upon my Philosophy coursework from Steubenville years ago, in particular my professor John F. Crosby's 1996 book The Selfhood of the Human Person, and what I found was that that these CNCs entailed both things the group held in common (universals, or communicable attributes) as well as things unique to the individual or group (incommunicable attributes).  This leads to a couple of important insights that drove the thesis of my dissertation. 

For one, the CNC model is a valid one to measure and analyze the ideologies of both individuals and particular groups.  That being said, it has been utilized in other forms by other writers over the years - the famed Appalachian religious scholar Dr. Loyal Jones utilized a similar model with six questions in his book Faith and Meaning in the Southern Uplands.  While this is technically either a sociological or anthropological device, analyzing CNCs is also important to historical writing as well, because understanding a particular group can also aid in a more comprehensive view of historical events.  After all, ideological streams do animate political and social movements, and thus understanding them historically also means understanding them ideological as well. And, this leads to a second point.

Analyzing a group's ideological foundation is not limited to just groups which have a positive impression in history, although that is a lot more fulfilling.  It also applies to groups which are rightly understood as being evil, and the Nazis were definitely evil.  But, knowing the "story" of why they came into existence does help understand the currents that fed into them, and like any group, the Nazis didn't appear out of a vacuum.  There were a lot of earlier antecedents who came before the Nazis, notably the Volkisch movement of which the Nazis would be the fullest manifestation of.  Therefore, with that in mind, I analyzed four areas from which the Nazis evolved, and they were these - occultism/mythological views of origins, Darwinian eugenics, certain political groups, and finally the work of certain philosophers (Nietzsche, Kant, Gobineau, Chamberlain, etc.).  With those in mind, there are also complexities and contradictions, such as why after Hitler and the Third Reich came to power, many of these groups and individuals who contributed to the evolution of National Socialism were later suppressed and persecuted?  Also, were the Nazis authoritarian or totalitarian, Left or Right, a product of Enlightenment thinking or its result, and what distinguished them from earlier groups?  These questions were all dealt with more deeply in the dissertation itself, and they are somewhat elaborate and not easily analyzed in a short article here. Sufficive to say though, it was extremely enlightening to research all this, and although I would come to some different conclusions on a personal level, the job of academic writing is to present evidence as is seen, and not to speculate one's own conclusions (although that speculation may actually have merit in another context).  For those curious, that is the abstract summary of the dissertation itself.

So, what do I hope to do with this?  I did this research in order to provide a foundation for other projects in addition to fulfilling the requirements to earn my doctorate.  I even plan eventually to utilize it in articles here, and you will see more of it in months to come.  I am also going to self-publish my work as a paperback book later, and if you are interested stay in touch as I will let you know when it is available.  Hopefully, this will answer several questions people have asked me. 

Getting a Ph.D. is a huge milestone for me, and I am grateful that God gave me the ability to do so.  And, for those who have encouraged me and supported my efforts, I thank you as well.  I also had a lot of opposition from people who really had no stake in any of this, and to them I say - bug off.  If someone cannot be there for you when you need the encouragement, then they don't have any right to criticize or offer opinions on it, and they need to shut up.  That is harsh, I know, and for those of you who this applies to, you have been told.  For the others though, thank you for your interest and encouragement, and may God bless you.  Thank you for allowing me to share, and will see you next time. 

Some Further Thoughts

 I hardly ever do two discussions in a week here, but the subject of the last discussion got me thinking some more about who I am, where I come from, and where I am now.  A lot of feelings came up during the thought processes that prompted all this, and I felt best to share more detail on them.

As many people go through life and they reach personal milestones, a danger is evident in that some do forget where they came from.  Pride is a lack of one's own self-awareness, and in place of that a person creates a persona that has little to do with their real experiences or actual facts of their lives.  We saw this play out the past several weeks in the selection of two Vice Presidential candidates - one is a self-made guy who came from nothing and really achieved some admirable things, which he fortunately wrote in a memoir, while the other likes to embellish and falsify his record to make himself look approachable to the average voter.  One has a proven track record of his policies that is overall good, the other is a trainwreck.  The two individuals I am speaking of are Ohio Senator J.D. Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.  In the case of the latter, the term "stolen valor" has for the first time ever become a newsworthy topic, as Walz is notorious for claiming things he did not do.  That is one aspect of this discussion I wanted to focus on now, as it is very important to understand.

Every person on the planet throughout history has their share of positives and negatives - we have to be realistic about that.  To the degree those are shared with the wider world is up to the individual, but an important aspect of sharing anything personal is honesty.  It can be nuanced, or it can be very open, but as long as it is honest it will garner respect.  In the field of Personalist philosophy, this process is known as subjectivity, and according to Dr. John F. Crosby in his book The Selfhood of the Human Person (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), it entails several things.  Here is an abbreviated list of what he notes on pages 82-96:

1. Self-presence - this means encountering oneself subjectively rather than objectively.

2. Inwardness - the interiority of a personal being anchors the outward thrust of an intentional action.

3. Self-determination - in simplest terms, this entails personal goals that benefit the individual and are not explicitly expressed outwardly. 

While Crosby's text actually goes into greater detail about all this, I want to simplify it here.  To summarize, knowing oneself is both motivational as well as predetermining one's actions based on the inner determination.  It entails deep self-assessment, and then being realistic about one's limitations as well as one's potential.  An added dimension to this is the "desire to aspire" - this is critical in that the actions one takes after assessing one's own strengths and weaknesses are contingent upon self-awareness of one's capabilities and limitations.  External factors of one's particular environment also play a role in this too, in that oftentimes one's self-determination can be in direct conflict with environmental restraints - for instance, you know you can do something, but factors such as limited finances, travel, and other things make it practically impossible without some other determinant which can overcome those limitations.  Or it could be a learning disability - dyslexia is such an example, because the person who is diagnosed with it may actually be a brilliant individual with a high IQ, but they learn things differently.  The person may be good at math for instance, but when trying to focus on a problem the person encounters things like transposed numbers or blurriness (the script is dancing on the page and is hard for the person to comprehend).  Society tends to be very judgmental of people limited by circumstances, and often a lot of valuable resources in talent are wasted because the person who has the limitations is judged or maligned for them and no one can see past that.  The good news for such people though is that first, God cares - he doesn't create garbage.  Secondly, God will send those people into your life that will see beyond the limitations, and they may be able to help that person to overcome them in creative ways.  I have made no secret that I really enjoy those Dhar Mann videos - they tend to get across powerful messages about fundamental issues people face.  There is a recent one that just hit YouTube which encapsulates the example I noted here, so let me give a thumbnail abstract of that.

The video has as its protagonist a poor Asian-American kid who gets into a private school.  However, he is bullied by rich kids, and even a crassly judgmental teacher gives him issues and berates him.  Although the kid has a proclivity for math, he also has a learning disorder that causes the numbers to dance around so he cannot solve an equation because essentially he is unable to see it.  No one understands this, and they berate the poor boy as being stupid and a "welfare case." However, after an unfortunate event causes him to lose his dormitory space for a week, a Chinese security guard takes an interest in the boy and offers to help.  What is interesting about this security guard is that he is a Chinese national who had to flee his country because he objected on moral grounds to research he conducted being used for destructive weapons - it turns out the humble security guard is a genius in his own right.  He also struggled with a similar disability, and the way he overcame it was by playing a piano - by treating the math equation like a musical score, he was able to train himself to utilize that to solve very complex equations.  It helps the boy, and he wins a seat on a math competition team for the school and later actually becomes successful in life.  Like many of these Dhar Mann videos, this one has a good message and it illustrates that perhaps instead of looking at one's limitations, we should look at their potential.  As an educator myself, I appreciate this because it often does help when you can have an observant eye for those that one instructs. And it reaps rich rewards - I have seen that in students I have personally mentored, but I have also been the benefactor of the same over the years.  I never had a learning disability, but I do know what it is like to be economically disadvantaged and coming from a broken home.  Having people who believe in you even when your parents take little interest in who you are makes a hell of a lot of difference, believe me.  If you read J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, he expresses the same sentiments.  However, it goes much further than that as there is another aspect to it, and that is what I wanted to talk about now.

When one grows up with economic and social disadvantage, one is not necessarily isolated.  When I was growing up like that, I knew many kids in my neighborhood who were in similar (or worse) circumstances.  Like many kids, we had our rivalries, disagreements, shifting alliances with each other, and other intricacies like any kids in a given neighborhood do.  But, at the end of the day, we all shared a mutual respect among ourselves as a sort of unwritten code.  We may squabble at times among ourselves, but if an outside threat entered the picture, we were quick to put those minor issues aside to present a united front to stand against the threat.  As many of us grew older, we went our separate ways and all of us have different lives now.  Thanks to social media however, we all actually stay in touch and generally we are all friends today.  Some of our given group were successes in various areas of life, others fell on hard times and some are still struggling, but we all still respect each other despite our station in life.  For those of us who have done better in life, our former neighbors keep us humble as they know us best in many cases, and it is a reminder to never forget where one comes from.  You don't want to revert back to that, but you remember it because it keeps you on track to not get over-inflated ego issues.  I said all that to say this now, so bear with me as I am about to attack some elitist snobs in academia. 

I am part of the educated class - I have a Ph.D. myself and am very proud of my accomplishments.  However, I have not been shy about calling out the elitism one sees among academic professionals, and it is galling to me personally.  What really "chafes my chaps" is when a supposed "expert" with a doctorate in something has no clue about that which he or she is supposed to be an "expert" of.  This is particularly true when it comes to Appalachian Studies.  I was once enthusiastic about the fact that universities have these departments, but my optimism was shattered when I saw the people who were in charge of those departments and who were teaching in them.  There is no big mystery about the fact that much of academia is dominated by political and ideological leftists, and often they become more elitist/activist than they do academic.  True scholarship eludes them, and they cannot relate to real-life aspects of whatever discipline they claim to have superior knowledge in.  Appalachian Studies is not unique to this problem, as I also glaringly saw it demonstrated in the field of Theology as well.  At my alma mater, which is now one of the biggest Pentecostal universities in the country, there is a theological faculty that frankly scares me in regard to the reality that these individuals are helping to "educate" future pastors and church leaders in their denominational traditions.  I heard disparaging comments in classes regarding the local community this university is located in (one professor called everyone in that particular town "hicks") as well as denigrating the laypeople and clergy in their churches as somehow "inferior" to themselves.  If I were the leadership of that particular university, I would perhaps heed the warning to "not bite the hand that feeds you."  The "hicks" that the professor derisively labeled are the people who over the decades have provided a lot of community support to that university, and many of them are donors.  As for the "inferior" laypeople and pastors, the offerings from those churches often have a portion that is designated for that school, and these are also the people sending their sons and daughters to that university to get a quality education that reflects their denominational heritage.  For some stuck-up elitist academic to belittle those people is beyond comprehension - if I were the president of that university, I would be handing out pink slips to these stuck-up jackasses.  This same thing, unfortunately, plays out at many colleges and universities, and it is a serious problem.  It is one reason why a couple of pivotal issues facing our nation have come to the forefront, and I want to talk about those now. 

The first hot-button issue has really stirred debate, and that would be student loan forgiveness.  I am not exactly for or against this, because I understand the argument for both sides and I am also a recipient of student loans myself.  However, I think people need to be more nuanced about it in that a couple of things need to be looked at.  First, I think forgiveness should be an option, but perhaps the sweeping universal forgiveness proposed by some Democrats may be a bit much.  This should be evaluated more on a case-by-case basis, and criteria would need to be met on that for it to happen. There are a lot of details on this I could share but won't due to time constraints, but perhaps I will address it separately later.  

The second issue is the quality of education itself.  The problems with academia that I mentioned earlier are creating a class of idiots with diplomas - they are indoctrinated by activists masquerading as educators, and the result is our educational system is getting dumber.  Not only that, but more frightening is how toxic many universities are now - if you differ from the groupthink on some campuses, you could face violent repercussions both from students and faculty.  This is one reason why now many Conservatives are promoting trade schools and the old apprenticeship programs over formal education at a university - the student learns real skills and doesn't waste time on stupid "gender theory studies" classes and other useless garbage.  And, they learn skills that will benefit them later as productive members of society.  I don't think university education should be completely eliminated, but perhaps a different kind of university would be more practical - being an alumnus of Liberty University myself now, I honestly can say that I probably got a more well-rounded education there than many Ivy League students get. The government should get out of education altogether except for maybe some basic common-sense policies, and the university should be the domain of either the Church or private groups instead.  And as for the Ivy Leagues, their day has passed now, and their inferior standards have decayed their legacy.  Unless they can be revitalized, I would discourage people from enrolling in them. Any rate, those two things give a background to what I want to bring home now.

Despite having a Ph.D., I still remember where I come from.  It is what keeps me focused.  I feel that J.D. Vance echoes that sentiment, and we need more of his caliber in leadership.  As the educated class now, we who possess doctorates have the duty to recognize potential and dignity in those we have shared a history with, and we cannot think we are "too good" to associate with them any longer.  So, remember your old friends, keep in touch with them, and you may find that to be the biggest blessing of your life.  Thanks again for allowing me to share. 

Perspectives

 As I am writing this today, it has been a very interesting past week.  For one thing, I am now Dr. Thrower, as I successfully defended my dissertation and also had my dissertation manuscript accepted by the university library, which is a prerequisite of graduation.  All I wait on now is the final grade and official word that I graduated and am conferred the degree.  That is a process, but it probably will happen in the next couple of days.  After almost 50 years on and off in school - from the day I stepped into kindergarten at Stuart Hill Academy in 1974 until I graduated from Liberty University with a Ph.D. now - I am glad my formal education is finally over. It has been a journey in and of itself, and although I said it took 50 years to get there, this does not mean that I had back-to-back educational experiences.   From kindergarten until I received my B.A. in 1996, it actually was, but then it was approximately 16 years between receiving my B.A. until starting my M.A. program.  However, even in that interim, I also managed to earn a paralegal certificate.  Most of that 16-year interim however was devoted to professional development - I rose in the ranks from a security guard right after undergraduate studies to becoming a practicing paralegal, and it was perhaps one of the more stable times in my life - I was fairly stable through my 30s as I mostly worked in offices and had decent income, at one point even becoming an assistant office manager for a title company.   But, I always wanted to complete my education as a Ph.D. was my dream since even my junior year of high school. Had circumstances been different, I would have done this 20 years ago in all honesty, but life doesn't work that way unfortunately and there are rabbit trails and detours we take either by our own choices or the dictates of circumstance.  However, the important thing is I am there now, and I have good reason to celebrate that.  But, today I just wanted to share a few personal observations about the journey itself, as it had its challenges and I want to outright address them because it is integral.  Also, I want this to be an encouragement to others as well, because people will face opposition, adversity, and other challenges as they pursue what they feel they are supposed to do.  And, that is what I want to talk about.   This may get a little acerbic in some aspects, but bear with me.

Most of my accomplishments have been the work of two people - myself and God.  It seems like at every turn I had opposition to my pursuits, and very little moral support from those who should have been there for me.  It is really sad when that happens, because one's family needs to be encouraging during the process and also celebratory during the accomplishment, but my family really never was.  My mother, bless her, did try to be and I will give her credit for that in hindsight, but none of my family were at either my B.A. or M.A. commencements save my ex-wife Barbara, who was married to me still during both.  I invited my parents, and my father blew me off as not being that important while my mother thought my dad was coming and refused to go because of him.  Although both of them are now gone and I forgave that, it still does sting a bit on occasion when I think of it.  I also had a barrage of criticisms from other family - instead of celebrating my achievements for instance, all my grandfather could say was a comment about my student loans (which he had no stake in whatsoever, so he needed to shut up). Cousins and other relatives were even more critical, in that I was accused often of being a "career student" (despite the fact it took 16 years between getting my undergraduate degree and starting my Master's program, during which time I actually was working quite regularly and making decent income).  None of them were there when I did all the work, went through all the challenges, and achieved so much on my own, yet they all had opinions about it.  Of course, some of the worst attacks came from my former in-laws, and to be honest they misjudged a lot of other things too.  Despite this opposition and lack of support though, I persevered and have proven them all wrong.  This leads me to a little bit of a soapbox about family members I want to vent now, as it may also help others who have faced isolation from the very support structure that should have been encouraging them. 

In watching many of these Dhar Mann videos in the past couple of years or so, I noticed many of them focused on deadbeat parents who forsook their families when they needed them most but then all of a sudden wanted to claim the glory when their child or ex succeeds.  I watched one of those today, and the story line entailed a young lady who became successful despite her mother dying of cancer and the father abandoning her when she needed love and support the most.  The father was a deadbeat, and one day he showed up at her business and tried to sabotage his daughter.  Luckily, the daughter then was able to tell her story, and the deadbeat father was exposed as a scammer and was arrested.  That story resonated with me, as a lot of it is my story too.  Neither of my parents were overly supportive of anything I did in life - my mother was sort of apathetic about it, while my father was often outright oppositional to me.  Yet, when I did succeed, everyone wanted to take credit for my success when in reality they had nothing to do with it - as a matter of fact, in my dad's case often he was an obstacle to it.  I had the grace to forgive them, and luckily I am at peace about the whole thing now as both my parents are now gone and at the end of their lives I believe they came to terms with things and in their own way they tried to reconcile their actions, and I accept that.  However, there are still other relatives that are living that have a skewered view of things, and I will always make sure to set the record straight.  And there are other things too which got under my skin - I have one cousin whom honestly I haven't even seen since I was seven who all of a sudden decided she wanted to be an "expert" in my dissertation process.  Mind you, I don't even think this particular cousin even went to college, so what in hell does she know about writing a dissertation??  That really is a serious pet peeve I have too - if you don't know what the hell you are talking about, then just keep your mouth shut.  I have way too many relatives who like running their mouths about things they know nothing about, and to be honest, it has all the effect to me of a set of press-on fingernails scratching a chalkboard.  If you remember a few months back, I discussed what the meaning of the command "thou shalt not bear false witness" was, and in contradiction to the common view that this is talking about lying, I made the point that it was actually more about gossip and slander.  A family curse, especially on my mother's side of the family tree, is this egregious sin - my relatives on Mom's side have among them a lot of notorious gossips and BSers, and to be honest, being around them is about as appealing as a roadkill sandwich. They don't verify facts about anything, and they actually are toxic with some of the stuff they say.  I know I have been an object of that for years myself, and they really loved doing it to my mother.  The question they often asked, for instance, when talking about Mom (their blood relative, mind you!) was this - "Is she still drinking?"  Let me give some back story on this first, because it will put this idiotic question into context. 

When I was a kid, my mother did enjoy drinking a lot.  From my earliest recollections, Mom always drank, and when we lived in the town of Kirby during my late childhood years and early teens, she really became problematic with her drinking.  One reason was due to where we lived - we were in abject poverty then, and so was everyone else who lived in town.  Almost every family in town had alcoholics, and many of us who were kids then had to essentially raise ourselves.  However, over the years after leaving Kirby when I was 15 years old, Mom began to get her life together and as time passed, she actually drank less.  At the time she passed away a couple of years ago, it was a major thing if Mom even drank as many as two beers in a year.  Now, she was a notorious smoker - Mom would smoke often up to a carton of cigarettes a week, and it was a more disgusting habit than her drinking used to be in all honesty, but even other critics of her in her family smoked as much if not more (and a few of them did much worse than that even).  And, although in her younger years Mom did drink harder alcoholic products like whiskey (she loved Canadian Mist for some reason), for the last 25-30 years of her life I never saw Mom drink a drop of whiskey at all.  The family members who like to say crap about Mom all the time didn't know her as well as I did.  For the last 8 years of her life, she lived with me, and I took care of her, and I know her better than anyone.  All I can say is that I knew my mother well - she was by no means perfect, and she would be the first to admit it.  But she also was growing too, and she came a long way, and, in the end, I can say I was proud of what she had been able to do for herself.  And one thing that was a redemptive quality of hers was that in her later years she had also become a lot more supportive and encouraging of me too, and one thing I missed about her was the fact we got to talk a lot during her last few years, and those talks were actually nice. I still miss those morning talks I had with her over coffee, and those are actually fond memories for me now that I will cherish.  A parent doesn't have to be perfect to be appreciated, and as long as they try, I believe that is what matters most.  The same could be said of Dad too - a story there as well.  Dad and I were actually estranged from each other since around 2006 up until his death in 2020, but in the last few years before he passed away, we had at least begun to talk more again, and although we really didn't get along all that well, he was my dad, and I loved him.  I had also begun to forgive him of many things, and I was frankly in a good place I felt with him when he passed away.  As far as I am concerned, when a relative dies, any last issues should die with them - for me, that means automatic forgiveness.  And I forgave both of my parents as well as other relatives, who in retrospect may have been much worse.  My major contention now is with some living cousins who don't want to let the old things that cursed our family die with the older generation.  It is good to preserve the best of our forebears, but we should not enshrine their sins as virtues either.  We should be better and rise above those.  Do we still love them and can we cherish their memories?  Of course, but at least be real about it.  Any rate, I just wanted to share those observations. 

I mentioned how happy I was that Trump chose J.D. Vance as his running mate for the Presidential race, and I have personal reasons for thinking that.  J.D. Vance reflects a lot of my own experience, and I have read Hillbilly Elegy and can actually see my younger self in his reflections in many cases.  J.D., like me, grew up in a poor family with Appalachian roots, and like myself he also had an assortment of relatives who helped raise him when his own parents were less than exemplary.  And, like me, J.D. has those who would slander him, misrepresent him, and generally are toxic - the mainstream media is a prime example, as they are basically a den of snakes.  I got a bit disturbed recently when a local university noted for being a teacher's college decided to have a very partisan forum to "challenge" J.D.'s views.  I found this disgusting in all honesty, because largely the "panelists" as is usually the case were a group of rich White liberals who had questionable Appalachian backgrounds (mind you, this was in the context of an "Appalachian Studies" forum too - I have already shared my opinions of what I think so-called "Appalachian Studies" are these days, and frankly it is a fake discipline as it is represented). I have a few things to say about self-designated "experts" on the culture some of us grew up in, and I am hoping it makes them squirm a little.

Questioning a person's upbringing is the height of insulting in all honesty, and it doesn't matter if the person targeted is high-profile or not.   When I read J.D.'s memoir - and Hillbilly Elegy is just that, a memoir and not a scholarly discourse - I knew the place he was coming from, as his experience mirrored mine in many instances.  I didn't grow up exactly like J.D. obviously, as he has experiences unique to him as we all do, but the central narrative convictions of his story are from the same perspective.  If I were to make a big suggestion to universities with Appalachian Studies departments, it would be this - at least have the courses taught by people actually from the region, instead of ultra-leftists Ivy Leaguers and Berkeley hippies.  Just consider this - would a rich White liberal be teaching African-American Studies courses??  In some cases, that is unfortunately what is happening but it shouldn't either.  The idea of higher education is to be taught and mentored by individuals who are actually experts in their fields, and a Berkeley hippie cannot be an "expert" in Appalachian Studies because they don't have the Appalachian experience.  They may think that because they listened to a Loretta Lynn record or watched Songcatcher they are all of a sudden "experts," but in reality they are morons.  A bit harsh, I know, but it does fit.  Listening to Loretta Lynn does not make one more Appalachian than Roots makes a person Black.  It is time to put a stop to this BS in academia,  I want to go back to Nat Hentoff's 1965 fictional book Jazz Country to make a point with an illustration.  The antagonist of the story, a young 16-year-old White jazz fan named Tom Curtis, is invited to the house of a rich White lady who is very close friends with many Black jazz musicians.  Many of them are also there, and a bass player named Bill Hitchcock engages in a conversation with the young Tom. Tom is asking him about Veronica, the rich White jazz afficianado, about how she "broke through" (meaning how she was accepted by the jazzmen).  He thought (mistakenly) that she was a member of CORE or something, and that reasoning got a sharp rebuke from Hitchcock, who told him this: "Boy, you have a lot to learn.  She 'broke through,' as you put it, very simply.  By being herself.  It may take time, but that's the only way to make it.  In anything that counts" (Nat Hentoff, Jazz Country.  New York: Dell Publishing, 1965: 32-33).  Hitchcock's rebuke needs to be directed at a lot of these "Appalachian Studies" professors, as they are so clueless when it comes to the actual Appalachian experience that they will even attack the personal story of someone like J.D. Vance because he differs politically with them.  There is a deeper issue with these "experts" though - at least young Tom Curtis was open to learning and wanted to "break through," but many of these professors in these "Appalachian Studies" departments at universities are often so elitists that they view in contempt anyone from the region that doesn't conform to their ideal.  I am wagering that the current director of the Appalachian Studies Association has never experienced using an outhouse, probably has never eaten ramps or poke greens, or experienced the poverty and necessity for self-sufficiency many of us who grew up in the region did.  As a matter of fact, such people looked down on us as merely "subjects," and they don't give a rat's posterior about the condition and experiences of the typical West Virginian or any other native of Appalachia.  All of their nonsense is about gender studies, "climate change," and other woke garbage, and they only relate it to the region by tacking the label "Appalachian" to it.  They actually reinforce stereotypes of Appalachian people, and they don't recognize our own incommunicable attributes as human persons in God's image (many are anti-Christian as well which also makes them out of touch with even many people I grew up around).  To be honest, if I were the head of one of those universities, I would fire every Appalachian Studies department professor and then replace them with capable scholars from the region who know the land and its people.  I would love, for instance, to see J.D. Vance being the department chair at a university some day after he retires from his political career - I think he would be the best thing to happen to the field of Appalachian Studies since the late Dr. Loyal Jones, who I consider a personal mentor and was one of the finest Appalachian scholars to live.  Maybe I will write him and suggest that.  It would be good to sit down over coffee at Panera with J.D. and discuss issues like that - I think we would have a great conversation.  If God so wills, maybe someday that can happen - I am a Ph.D. now after all, so doors may open.  

I talked about a lot today, and to be honest it felt good.  Much more could be said about all this, but you get the idea.  Any rate, thank you for allowing me to share, and will see you next time. 

Provision and Some Other Thoughts

 As I write this week again, I am in a much better frame of mind than usual.  Yesterday, I successfully defended my dissertation, and for all intents and purposes, I am now Dr. David Thrower.  This for me is a major milestone, as a Ph.D. has been on my bucket list for almost 40 years, and now we are there.  Granted, originally my doctorate was going to be in a theological discipline, but God didn't open that door so I am a historian instead.  But, that is OK by me - I did what I set out to do, and that is what is important. I may devote a discussion to my Ph.D. journey at some point, as it is an idea a friend had that actually is not really a bad one at all.  

My discussion today centers upon a homily I heard at Mass Sunday.  Due to conservation of gas, we decided to attend Mass locally at St. Mary's here in Hagerstown, and to be honest, it is a good parish and I actually do appreciate their Masses.  The new rector of the parish, Fr. James Boric, is a young priest who has a lot of passion for his vocation.  The homily yesterday centered around the first Sunday reading, which was Exodus 16.   The passage in this chapter had to do with the Israelites wandering in the wilderness and God's provision of the manna.  While Fr. Boric focused on that emphasizing the Eucharistic dimension (which it does have), I immediately got another application from it that hits closer to home.  One aspect of the story is that God continued to provide the manna to sustain the people while they were in the wilderness, and when they arrived at their "promised land," the manna stopped at that point.  Let me now give a personal application of this, as it was profound.

The past 3-4 years for me have been a struggle - not being employed practically the whole duration of my doctoral program, and also going through a divorce, the loss of both my parents, and so many other things.  During that time thankfully, God sustained me.  First, it was the COVID-19 stimulus, which included a couple of large checks as well as extra UI benefits. Second, after my dad passed away in 2020, I did receive some money from his estate that helped to take care of many things I needed.  Third, due to limited income, I was automatically eligible for SNAP, and that helped for almost 4 years.  Fourth, my school provided me with refunds in excess of my tuition costs, which also helped tremendously.  Finally, during COVID, I did also receive rental assistance through the ERAP program that helped a lot.  However, in the past couple of years, those things have slowly gone away.  I finished my UI benefits at the end of 2021, my ERAP payments ended at the beginning of 2023, my SNAP ended in April of this year, and due to finishing my doctoral degree, I won't be getting any further student refunds because I won't be in school.  This actually put me into a very precarious situation, and I have been relying heavily on God for answers.  Then, I hear this homily yesterday, and it made me realize something - maybe the loss of all that means that I am on the proverbial banks of the Jordan ready to cross into my "promised land."  There are a couple of other details about this from Sunday I want to get into now, as they do play into the whole picture.

Even before the homily at Mass, something happened in church that was really phenomenal.  I felt a lightness, as if every burden was being lifted and that all was going to be OK.  Then, if that was not enough, while Fr. Boric was giving his homily, I blinked my eyes for a second and I saw something amazing - over Fr. Boric's head, it looked like Christ himself was standing with his arms outstretched over him as he celebrated Mass.  That hasn't happened in a number of years, and it was just so amazing.  I feel as if now a breakthrough of some sort is coming, and I will definitely welcome it. Also, I think in preparation for this, the past week I spent trying to really search things, and I began doing two things.  One, I started to repent of things I felt I was doing wrong.  Secondly, I began to start thinking of things to be thankful for, and incorporated them into my daily prayers.  A third thing I did was I pulled out my shrine setup and constructed a sacred space in my bedroom with it - mind you, I haven't had a shrine up in over 13 years, since we lived in Largo back then.  I have noticed a different atmosphere in the house too, and I very much welcome it.  I hope that in sharing this others can be encouraged as well.

Due to the schedule this week, I am going to keep things brief for today, but just wanted to share this.  Thank you for listening, and will see you here again next week.