Reflection on Recollection

 My last couple of reflections have to do with recollection of my own story, and that seems to continue.  This week, I was working on a comprehensive family tree with Geneanet.com, which is similar to Ancestry but does offer more benefits. One of the benefits it offers is to print and publish a family tree up to 50 generations.  The only problem with this, like many of these genealogical sites, is that people do make dumb mistakes when they input information, so you have to comb through a lot of inconsistencies to sort out things.  One is birthdates of ancestors - some of the dingdongs who post the information have weird dates - people having kids before they were born, people having kids or getting married when they are under 10 years old, etc.  When I transferred my Gedcom from Ancestry to Geneanet to work on getting the book printed, I had over 300 of these crazy inconsistencies in my tree, and the easiest resolution for many of them is to just take out birthdates or death dates (some of the inconsistencies even had people being buried before they died!  Talk about a horrible way to go, right?) as the names are probably right but the data is screwed up. Other problems included having baptism information long after a person's death - being that both Ancestry and Geneanet both rely on Mormon archive sources, that may actually not be a mistake as Mormons do practice baptism in proxy of dead ancestors, which is weird and heretical, but it is a thing for them.  So, an ancestor who died in 1500 has a baptism date of 1875 - that would be due to the fact that said ancestor probably had a Mormon descendant who undertook this.  For Mormons, it is a weird evangelistic thing, which is why they started collecting genealogical data to begin with, and thankfully the positive fruit of that is they have perhaps one of the most comprehensive genealogical archives in the world.  So, if you are doing your own family tree and notice weird baptism dates centuries after an ancestor died, that may be the reason for that.  

My own family tree now encompasses about 1500 years, and it contains pretty much a complete family history that includes everything from Roman emperors to Black slaves, and it covers practically every ethnicity in the Western world as well as at least 4 Native American tribes.  It also makes me distantly related to several others who share my heritage - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Robert E. Lee, George Washington, Barack Obama, the Hapsburgs, the Windsors, and others.  I often joke that my own veins are a history of Western Civilization, and to be honest that may be truer than I even know.  Reflecting on one's heritage is an important part of one's "story," and thus it does make you appreciate better the person who you are.  After all, you are not a random accident of nature - God gave you the genetics and other distinctions you have because you are uniquely created in his image.  The modernist secularism which denigrates personhood also is iconoclastic when it comes to history, and and as a result people don't value themselves, much less anyone else.  And, that is what will be the backdrop of a little discussion I want to have today. 

I am going back to my education in Philosophy I had at Franciscan University of Steubenville, and my professor there, Dr. John Crosby, wrote an amazing book entitled The Selfhood of the Human Person (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996).  Crosby deals a lot with the topic of personal recollection, and in doing so he connects it to another concept called subjectivity.  Subjectivity, as he defines it on pages 83-91 as being comprised of two things - self-presence and self-determination.  The first is defined on page 83 as a person acting through themselves in such a way that it entails the utilization of distinguishing between cognition and volition.  What that means is that knowledge and will must be differentiated, and that one can easily overcome the other if not balanced.  The second one is defined as the subjective freedom of the person to act - it doesn't matter if the choice of the person is good or bad, but personhood grants liberty to exercise that choice. On the downside of this however, is that a choice will always have a consequence, and the wrong choice could result in the loss of exercise of will and even one's freedom.  Also, when one exercises will over another to subject them to their whims, that violates the gift of personhood.  This is also why subjectivity is not the same as subjectivism. Now that we have established that, Crosby later goes into why this is integral to understanding our own individuality.  For this, on pages 248 -280, he gives several signs as to why the personhood of human beings is finite, and thus should be cherished as such:

1. The plurality of persons and in particular a certain partiality of each individual.

2. The individual's relation to time.

3. The suspension of the individual between potentiality and actuality - we have the potential to be or do certain things, but our choices actualize that. 

4. The unity of "person" and "nature" in every individual person - personhood is a gift of God, and thus we also inherit a nature that channels our individuality.

5. Discrepancies between being and consciousness

6. The endangered condition of individual freedom - the choices we make could subject us to the control of other things.

7. The unity of belonging to oneself and receiving oneself as a gift - "created in the image of God" is a precious attribute of personhood, in other words. 

8. Selfhood awakens in the human person as a result of self-transcendance - or, making potentiality an actuality.  This goes in line with a saying I heard years ago - "your present position does not determine your future potential."  

9. Finally, the finite personhood of human beings revealed in their moral existence. 

What we are talking about, in plain language, is not letting circumstance and the opposition of others dictate to you who you really are.  I am not into the Joel Osteen "positivity" crap or anything like that I will assure you, but there is a certain validity in being able to recognize one's self-worth, but doing so realistically and honestly.  We all should know we all fall short of perfection, and that even includes what we think is perfection.  This has nothing to do with that - rather, it is using assets you may already possess inside you to reach whatever potential you have capabilities for.  In some cases it will not be easy - it takes work to get to a certain goal for sure, but if you have what you need within yourself and also have the willpower to commit to the goal, it can be achieved.  It also helps when you have people along the way who believe in you, as well as putting as much distance as possible between those who want to drag you down and condemn you.  They don't see the full picture, and therefore their opinion in regard to your personal development is worthless.  You should be aware of your own potential, know your own limitations, and not let circumstances or the opinions of others discourage you.  No doubt, you will be gossipped about, laughed at, condemned, criticized, and dismissed, but don't worry about that.  You can just tell such detractors - even if they are family - to screw off and your duty is to focus on your objective.  Recollection entails all of that.  And, it will also be integral to network with others who share similar convictions or who do actually give you encouragement - you will need that as well. This need to have like-minded or encouraging people around you is essentially a component of subjectivity.  Critics, gossips, and detractors on the other hand are subjectivist, and that is an important difference to understand.  And, if you stay the course, what is sure to happen one day is that those who set themselves up as your critics and detractors will either be humbled by your success or they will be apologizing to you.  If they apologize, always forgive, but make them understand as well that their behavior can be toxic and they need to do self-examination.  All this now leads to the second aspect of my discussion today. 

In his seminal book Leisure, the Basis of Culture (New York: Random House, 1963), Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper expands further on this by noting something on page 44 in the definition of a Latin word, acedia.  Pieper notes that the term could be specifically translated as "despair from weakness," and it is associated with the denial of a person to give the consent of his will to his own being.  This is one aspect today we see in corporate culture in many companies - let me get into that a little bit.  Big corporations are about one thing - their bottom line.  This means that philosophical principles of personhood are irrelevant to them.  I turn again to the whole Dhar Mann phenomenon which has taken social media by storm.  In one of his videos, Dhar creates this story of a woman who misses many important things in her own daughter's life because her boss thinks she is a robot.  It is causing friction at home for her, but the boss doesn't care - all he wants is a huge account to be acquired, and the personhood of his subordinates is seen as a hindrance to that goal. The lady in question is a hard worker - she gives a lot to the company, but whatever she gives is never enough. So, on the day of a family vacation that her young daughter was looking forward to, she gets a call from this jackass boss of hers demanding she comes in for a meeting with a high-profile client despite the fact at this point she and her family were just about to take off for their vacation together.  Under much duress and protest, the lady relents and goes to the business luncheon.  During the course of the meeting, she gets a call from her husband, who had taken the daughter ahead of time for the vacation in which she would join them later, and the call is bad news that her little daughter had sustained an injury and was in the hospital. She has to immediately leave, but the boorish boss follows her out and berates her over it, and finally she has had enough and promptly quits.  Later, she and a former co-worker actually go into their own business together and set up their own firm, and it begins to take clients away from her former boss.  Irritated by this, the former boss storms into her office and is short of threatening legal action when one of his former clients who now signed with her comes in and talks about the success of a new work/life model adopted by their company she initiated, and finally the former boss gets it.  The lesson here is that one cannot enslave themselves to money and corporate servitude, as that is the form of acedia Pieper defines.  Let's add a few other observations here. 

Many people these days feel stuck in dead-end jobs - they may earn a good paycheck, and they may have a level of success, but they miss something.  I know, because I was there myself some years ago. The demands of such jobs often become an idol to the person stuck in them, and everything ends up being sacrificed to the company for a bit of convenient material stability.  There is nothing wrong with having a few bucks in the bank, and to be honest even the Bible does not condemn financial success - what the Bible actually condemns is the idolatry that financial success causes one to risk, and in the corporate world it is an imposed idolatry on people.  And, many feel this too - that is why movies such as Office Space became cult classics in all honesty.  And, what is worse is that the "security" such a job brings is extremely temporary and vulnerable.  Companies do not prioritize personhood, and the average employee is a means unto an end for the company.  If a situation renders an employee unable to do what the company is expecting of them, they are easily replaced like a used tampon.  God never intended human beings to live and exist like that, and in the process of acquiring a nice salary and some impressive benefits, a person has to put themselves on hold and many of their passions and dreams are forgotten.  Pieper actually presents the concept of leisure in a way that it is seen as a virtue, and sometimes time alone to reflect and organize one's thoughts is essential.  However, crony corporatism is a jealous god, and when something else starts to garner a worker's attention in some way, the wrath of the corporate "god" is meted out without mercy. It is truly sad that so many don't have the benefit of living life the way they are supposed to because some corporate executive holds their future over their heads.  That is what needs reform.  This is also a major reason why many of these corporate moguls are atheists - or, I should say they profess atheism.  In reality, they see themselves as gods and want to exert their power over everything, and there is no better example of this than those wannabe antichrists that control the World Economic Forum - Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, and company want to control you by making you live in a dystopian caste system of their creation, but they see themselves as above what they expect of you.  This is the true goal of social Darwinism and every other adverse political system in the world - communism, fascism, Nazism, and corporatism are all variations of the same species of dehumanizing demagogery.  None of this was God's plan for humanity, and therefore it should be condemned at all opportunity.   Now for some closing thoughts.

Recollection, reflection, and leisure are all vital components of the human experience, and God hardwired them into us from our creation. We risk peril if we deny ourselves those things, or if we allow others to deny them to us - they are fundamental to our existence, and without them we lose the essence of who God created us uniquely to be.  Thank you for allowing me to share, and I will surely have more to say on this later. 

Rediscovering Old Sentiments

 This is a series of thoughts I am publishing earlier than anticipated as last night I was watching something that sort of ignited something inside, and I wanted to spend a bit of time reflecting on it today.  

In the past year or so, I have really gotten into watching these Dhar Mann videos. In case you haven't seen those, they are short inspirational films produced and created by a billionaire Indian American businessman named Dhar Mann, and many of them went viral.  They deal with situations in life where a lesson is conveyed via what is a normal life situation.  In doing so, the videos deal with a lot of life and social issues - bullying, divorce, workplace discrimination, etc.  The typical formula of such videos is that a situation happens where a person is misjudged by someone, and as it turns out not everything is as it seems - for instance, in several videos, a manager of a store is rude to a customer, only to find out later that the person the manager was rude to ends up being someone significant - their boss, a friend of their boss, and in some cases even another person who ends up being more important than their appearance would suggest.  At some point in the story, the individual tries to tell their situation, and their account ends with the words "so you see," which has become one of Dhar's trademark phrases.  While there are occasional political/social takes in these I disagree with, overall, the videos do convey some solid messages, and they also serve as an inspiration for perserverance in the face of seemingly overwhelming adversity.  In that, they are actually not only entertaining to watch, but they aid in helping someone see their own value as an individual. Last night, I was watching a new one of these that really got my attention, and I want to talk about that briefly here before sharing some thoughts of my own.

In the story, there are a group of directionless street kids who ended up homeless due to unfortunate situations in their families, and to survive these kids resorted to petty theft.  Their ringleader, Daniel, has been in and out of jail many times.  When they have time to just relax, they play a form of street soccer, and that gets the attention of an elderly Black man who is a soccer coach himself.  The old man sees a potential in these boys, and he eventually forms them into their own soccer team to compete in tournaments.  The old man, however, has another dimension - he was once one of those street urchins, and he understands them in a way no one else can.  This causes him to make a connection with them.  At first, the boys are skeptical as they think he is either an undercover narc or just a crazy old man.  However, after the guy is fired from his original team he coached by a manager who is more interested in money than this guy's passion for helping kids, he finds the kids in an alley and goes to visit them.  He brings them a new soccer ball, and he then convinces them of his genuinity by offering them food - many of these kids haven't had a decent meal in days, so they have ravenous appetites. In time, he forms the kids into a team, and he especially becomes a mentor to young Daniel.  Daniel, at this point, was facing a long jail sentence if he didn't show up for court, and on one of the initial soccer practices he forgot his court date and the cops show up, apprehend him, and take him in.  The judge pronounces sentence - Daniel has to serve one month behind bars for his offenses.  The old man comes into the courtroom though and begs the judge for mercy - although the judge cannot reverse the sentence, she does allow Daniel to play the tournament, which they win.  A month passes, and by this time the poor coach and his wife are in bad financial straits - little income, and the bills are piling up. Then, one day he gets a knock on the door, and Daniel is there.  Daniel surprises the coach with a check for $10K and asks him to be the manager, as Daniel was discovered by a scout and recruited for a team after serving his jail time. The happy ending of this was quite inspirational, and it was a happy ending for both Daniel and his coach.  For some reason, that story sparked a few things in me, and that is what I want to talk about now.

Many of you who have either followed me for some time or know my story will remember my own upbringing - I spent a large part of my later childhood in very abject poverty in a small West Virginia town called Kirby.  My single mother at the time was a chronic alcoholic, and there were days we didn't have much to eat in the house - I remember many times surviving on buttered toast for dinner on some nights, or even raiding the neighbors' gardens for vegetables so we could have something like corn on the cob, fried squash or cucumbers, and drop biscuits I learned quickly to mix up myself.  When we had a little more money, a bag of Doritos or a piece of longhorn cheese from the local store was a huge luxury at some parts of our lives then.  Many of the neighbor kids were in the same situation, and we had an unspoken code between us - sure, we had squabbles and disputes, but everyone knew who everyone else was and we all respected each other.  I had no criminal tendencies or anything, as I had other things to divert my attention, but some of the neighbor kids were not as lucky.  Some of them suffered abuse, one girl in our community was being trafficked for money as a sex slave by her own father, and later many of the neighbor kids I knew ended up being involved in crimes, drugs, and other bad situations.  Fortunately for me, my life turned around when I was 15, and I got out of the community and my high school years were much more stable as my mom ended up being a live-in caretaker for an elderly lady whose family practically adopted us as their own.  But, even before that, my diversions were reading, listening to vintage big band music, and either fishing in the creek or collecting wild plants in the nearby woods - teaberries, wild garlic, wild berries, and also an occasional unique flower like a lady's slipper or Jack-in-the-pulpit that grew on the ridge that loomed in front of our house.  Those pursuits gave me not only a vivid imagination, but also helped to educate me so I did very well in school and was able to in time go off to college after high school and live a somewhat stable life.  Also, finding Christ at age 16 - a time which was filled with a lot of adjustments and transitions for me - helped a lot, as church gave me an outlet for doing something constructive too.  Any rate, as I watched that Dhar Mann video, a lot of that was brought back to me, and it led to a few other thoughts as I began to reflect on it. 

To begin, I want to talk about mentorship.  Fortunately for me, when I was young I had many good mentors in my life that helped guide me  - pastors, good neighbors, teachers, a couple of more sound relatives, etc.  Mentoring is important, and although anyone can display empathy, what really gives a sort of "street cred" is if a potential mentor comes from where you come from - that means they have been there and they know what you are facing.  The problem with a lot of counseling and social programs today is that they are made up of essentially educated idiots who have no clue as to what the people they are supposed to be helping are going through.  Often they are rich White college kids who grew up in stable households, and they don't share the values of their clientele.  They are always trying to psychoanalyze their "subjects," and they can get a little too patronizing.  This is particularly true of political liberals who decide they want to be "social justice warriors" and don't know a damn thing about life.  This is why nowadays the Democrats are so out of touch with the groups they consider their target constituencies, and it is also unfortunately a reason why many of my fellow conservatives also miss the boat on this stuff too.  Let me get into that now. 

Many poor people - be they Black inner-city kids in Baltimore or rural White Appalachians from my home state of West Virginia - are by default socially conservative.  Yet, mainstream conservatism has ignored them for so long that they vote for Democrats as a matter of survival.  The thing is however is that conservative neglect and Democrat patronization are both detrimental to these communities, and therefore something different is needed.  I want to first address where conservatives got things wrong, and then I will focus on Democrats.

I am a very staunch conservative myself, both socially and fiscally.  I believe strongly in conserving traditional values, I want small government, and there is a sort of social inequality that has plagued this country for 60 years at least or more.  But, at times many conservatives can also be clueless to real needs and issues in certain demographics, and when I hear someone I would otherwise agree with disparage poor people, it bugs me. Despite how "pro-life" many self-professed conservatives claim to be, it has glaring inconsistencies when you actually hear what they really think.  I remember a few years back in Florida when I went to church with this guy named Bob and his wife Carol.  Bob was a man of some means, and he retired part-time in Florida as a "snowbird."  He claimed to be "pro-life," but what happened in the course of conversation was him saying something to this effect - he thought that poor people were hopeless, and therefore any programs or incentives to help them out of their poverty was a waste of resources because to him they chose to be that way.  He essentially more or less expressed support for constructing an economic caste system, he was open to eugenics measures, and he also even had a bit of overt racism in his tone as he elaborated upon his views.  To me, this was anything but "conservative," and I have learned over the years that just because someone is registered "Republican" on their voter ID does not necessarily make them "conservative."  Bob was raised in a rather wealthy home, he had never experienced the challenges of just struggling to make ends meet, and his comments displayed a sickening ignorance of real life.  And, this is unfortunately what wins Democrats elections in many cases, or at least it used to (more on that shortly).  Bob is one of many who share these attitudes, as even high-profile "conservatives" such as the late Pat Robertson and Bill O'Reilly have even supported eugenics programs against poor Appalachian populations and Black segments in cities.  This is a huge reason why I never supported the Republicans and have always remained an independent conservative - I cannot bring myself to support Republicans who talk and act like this.  Fortunately, in recent years there has been a grassroots shift, as many elitists are thankfully now being outshadowed by more common-sense people, and that is due in part to individuals such as Donald Trump.  Trump is not perfect, and as a billionaire businessman himself he hasn't experienced the hardships many people struggle with everyday either.  But, the difference is that he is not claiming to - he is in support of many measures that would benefit poorer segments of the citizenry, and for that I support him although I will never be a Republican. For other self-styled "conservatives" like Bob though, I am convinced they are elitists who live in their own self-constructed ivory towers, and I want nothing to do with them.  At some point, I want to do my own manifesto on this from a political perspective, but that is for another time.  Let's attack Democrats now.

Like elitists self-styled "conservatives" such as Bob, the Democrats as a whole are outright aloof to real problems too.  While many of them want big government spending and more weird handouts that look good in principle, the reality is that Democrats are just as elitist if not more so, and they always have been.  Unlike the Bobs of the world, the Democrats do not dismiss the plight of poor Americans, but rather they exploit it to gain power for themselves, which means they go to the other extreme.  They thing they can buy and bribe votes from targeted populations by promising a virtual goody-bag of entitlements, but they don't deliver and usually those entitlement programs are failures.  In the past ten years or so, the real face of the Democratic agenda has come to light, and what it really is basically is a group of career politicians who will do literally anything to secure power for themselves - many are financed by megalomaniacal billionaires like the Despots of Davos (Soros, Schwab, Gates, and company), and they exploit the poor to gain more power for themselves.  They would love to implement programs that would even defy the scenario Aldous Huxley created in Brave New World, and they would be happy if 80% of the population was impoverished and died off so they could completely dominate the planet.  This too is wrong and needs to be stopped as well.  Again, I will save more detail on that for another time. 

Whether the elitist denotes himself as a "conservative" or a "liberal," the bottom line is that they are still elitists.  Each wants to eradicate people who don't meet their standard, and neither has the common good at heart.  An elitist is an elitist, and like a zebra, it cannot change its stripes.  The time has come for an alternative to both of these honestly, and surprisingly many others are thinking the same thing - this is why Donald Trump is doing so well, and why Robert Kennedy Jr. is also gaining a lot of attention. Both Trump and RFK resonate with a wider audience than the Establishment does, and the Establishment hates this.  On that ground, there are really two sides to the whole issue that no one focuses on - Establishment vs. Anti-establishment.  The average guy on the street - who now has to worry about whether to eat or pay his rent due to inflation and other crazy nonsense - is sick of the Establishment, and the new movement is more commonsense, and it is also diverse - more Latinos and Blacks are embracing it, as they are populations often spurned by this Establishment.  This change is good, as it means that finally people are coming to their senses.  Let's hope that continues.

I got off on all that to say this.  Our young people in particular need mentors, but they need mentors who can relate to their experience, and not some dumbass psych major from Harvard.  The young people in question are not the blue-haired freaks blocking traffic and burning down cities either - those are the rich White offspring for the most part of the elitists, and they are the Establishment's "Storm Troopers" for maintaining power. No, the young people I am speaking of are the poor Black inner-city kid who shows intelligence and just needs guidance to channel it into something better.  It is the poor Appalachian kid who goes to school with holes in their shoes but also has a knack for algebra and thus raw potential that needs to be cultivated.  It is the Puerto Rican kid in Harlem who maybe displays a talent for playing the saxophone and thus has the basic tools to turn that passion into a success.  These are the true future of America, and we need to pay attention to them.  I was musing that it would be nice to mentor a group of 5-6 mountain kids who are being raised like I was, and maybe turn them into potential leaders - everyone deserves a leg-up, but the right people who care need to help those who deserve it based on their individual God-given talents, and there is a reason for that.  Many of these kids are disregarded by their own families in many cases - they have a passion, but they are either threatened when they show an interest in it, or their folks just plain don't care.  They also face adversity in school - many of them are bullied, targeted for bad treatment by bad teachers who have no place in a school, and many are forced to settle for less.  They feel alone, and that no one cares about them, and as a result, they often are lost in bad behavior that will eventually kill them (Fentanyl addiction is on the rise not only in the inner cities, but like a bad virus it now infects rural areas and small towns too).  That needs to be remedied.  I speak as a kid myself who grew up like this, and by God's grace I was protected from a lot of the negative influences, but I was also forced to live with many adversities too.  It is time that changes for good.  

Thank you for allowing me to share today, and while there is much more that could be said on this, I have to streamline and organize my thoughts on it so I can at a later time.  Have a good remainder of your week, and will see you next time.  

Conservative Drama - It Needs to Stop

 Over the past few weeks, a drama has been unfolding on one of the most visible and largest conservative platforms on social media, the Daily Wire.  The Daily Wire is the home of Ben Shapiro, a capable and quick-witted political commentator who I have watched for several years on a frequent basis.  Ben has good insights on things, and although I don't see eye-to-eye with him on everything, overall he has some good content.  However, in the past couple of years or so there have been some rather silly kerfuffles going on, and for some reason Shapiro seems to be in the middle of them.  Recently, a new one has raised its head and it involved another conservative political figure, Candace Owens.

Candace Owens, a Black lady who is also a highly capable conservative speaker, was one of the main people who was involved with a movement called Blexit - this movement reflects a justifiable and very welcome discontent from many Black Americans who are disillusioned with Democrat politics and want alternatives, and many of them have become staunch conservatives.  Among some of them are Joel Patrick, C.J. Pearson, Dr. Carol Swain, media personalities Diamond and Silk, economist Charles Payne, Baltimore area political figure Kimberly Klacik (more on her momentarily), and so many others.  These are decent people who are seeing through the "plantation pimp" facade the Democrats have held over much of the Black community since LBJ's Presidency, and it's a positive development.  Candace has been a powerhouse for this movement, and she is also a very good asset for conservatives in general. It also represents a common-sense shift in the political landscape as the masks of the Leftist elitist hacks are coming off and many regular people are seeing what those demons really are.  This is a long-overdue movement, and it also demonstrates that true Conservatism is a diverse and very inclusive (in the right context) movement that relates to the Joe Schmo on the street better than do the elitist hacks who run our government. But, if our own human concupiscence has taught us everything, nothing is perfect, and this latest scuffle between two capable conservative figures (Shapiro and Owens) is a reminder.  So, let's get into that. 

As we all know, on October 7 of last year a very heinous and horrible terrorist attack occurred in Israel when a group of demonic-driven terrorists called Hamas attacked and killed over 1200 people (mostly Jewish Israelis but there were others too) and then they took several hostages.  This led to a justifiable retaliation on the part of Israel against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and as is usually the case in these situations, it got very murky from there.  Hamas is known, for instance, for the use of civilians as human shields, and will often base its activities in hospitals or other humanitarian locations - they do that for a reason.  Hamas wants to amplify the destruction by hiding behind civilians who are often innocent, and as a result when such a place is targeted by the IDF, Hamas then will use its propaganda mechanism to promote "genocide' accusations against Israel due to innocent civilian casualties. But, Israel is not totally without fault either.  While Israel is a very legitimate nation, and its people do have a birthright to the land there, not all is perfect in that either.  While there have been some noble measures on the part of Israel to minimize collateral damage, unfortunately a lot of times civilians get targeted anyway despite the fact they are innocents, and that never looks good.  Many indigenous Christians of the region are often unfortunately caught up in the crosshairs of the conflict, and their deaths are oftentimes used as justification to brand Israel as some sort of South African or Third Reich reincarnation (which it is not).  Then, when you have some radically ultra-Orthodox Jewish factions there being openly hostile to Armenian and other Christians, it does little for Israel's image.  In all fairness, the radicals on both sides do not represent the totality, but it is hard to see beyond that for many.  As a result, many indigenous Christian communities of the region, who should be natural allies of Israel, are often made very anti-Israel and some will even support terrorists who would kill them in a minute. This whole situation is unfortunate, and it strikes a personal nerve with me that I want to talk about now.

I was raised with a strong love for the nation of Israel and for the Jewish people in general. In part, it is because I myself do have ancestors who were Conversos, so I feel a connection.  On another level, I also used to be a Pentecostal dispensationalist, and like many of them I saw Israel's existence as a prophetic miracle and thus I could have been considered at one time a "Christian Zionist." However, this caused a huge crisis of faith for me later as I became Catholic in that "Christian Zionism" is rejected soundly by the Catholic Church.  Also, my advocacy for many years for Middle Eastern Christian minorities such as the Armenians and Assyrians began to challenge my former "Christian Zionist" ideas, and as I learned more, I began to realize some things.  I will share a story of that later, but sufficive to say,  I have come to an understanding that one can love and support Israel without making Israel perfect and believing any action of Israel as a nation is divinely-guided.  Jews are not Christians, and many of them do not accept the Lordship of Jesus, and some are even openly hostile to Christians.  In time, the Church does believe there will be a mass conversion of the Jewish people to the Gospel, and as a spoiler to my future story on this, I think their assemblage in modern Israel may be a step toward that.  And, there are other complexities I would have to share in a separate story later, but summarily my own support for the state of Israel is much more nuanced than it used to be.  And, that was a painful growth experience too. Now, with that background, let us get back to the original discussion.

Ben Shapiro, as a devout Orthodox Jew, is passionate about Israel and he is also proud of his heritage.  I totally appreciate that, and he should be as he does have a rich legacy of both faith and family that God gave him.  However, in recent broadcasts of his show on Daily Wire, Ben has been almost obsessed with the topic of October 7, so much so that he has even resorted to the tactics of Leftist race-baiters like Al Sharpton in labeling anyone who disagrees with him as an "antisemite."  This led to a very bitter feud with Candace Owens, who merely pointed out that she disagreed with some of the strategy of Israel in this conflict, and her concerns were justifiable - many conservatives, like myself even, have learned to become more nuanced in our support of Israel, and it doesn't mean that these conservatives like Owens are "antisemites" for doing so.  So, last week, Candace resigned from the Daily Wire, and she has launched her own platform.  Ben's attitude is an unfortunate tragedy, and as a result he may be actually aiding actual antisemites who show up in conservative circles (one notable one who has been a huge disappointment in recent years is Mark Dice - I used to like Mark Dice until he did actually launch antisemitic attacks against Ben and others, and to be honest, I have no time for that).  Ben would do well to understand that just because Candace Owens may disagree with him on a minor issue, it does not make her "antisemitic" and to be honest I don't even think it makes her anti-Israel.  We need to be careful of where we place accusations in other words.

This recent incident is by no means the only conservative struggle - Ben has had a feud with Steven Crowder, the conservative comedian/commentator, and Candace has her own beef with Baltimore politician Kimberly Klacik.  I refuse to take sides in any of these silly struggles, as I actually like all the people involved and they need to sort it out and realize we have something much bigger to stand against than each other. It is time conservatives grow up, lest we snatch defeat from the hand of victory and lose America as a nation while a bunch of high-profile figures in our movement make asses of themselves by having petty squabbles.  So to Ben and Candace I say this - both of you need to grow up, shut up, and get back to what is important. Enough is enough, as our nation is facing several things that threaten to destroy our society.  Time to use common sense people. 

That was today's soapbox, and the bottom line is this - I want what is best for America, and despite minor personal differences we have with others who may have the same concerns we do, we need to man it up, work together, and let's restore decency and order to our nation.  Save the crazy interpersonal squabbles for another time, as they could destroy us if you don't, Ben and Candace.  Thank you. 

Recovering Lost Passion

 This week's reflections are composed of things that have been on my mind for the past week or so, as circumstances have compelled me to re-examine some things in my own life.  The events of the past four years which have occurred in my own life specifically have more or less plunged me into a transitional time in which I had to revisit and evaluate many things.  A lot has changed in the past few years, and it has led me to a few small conclusions which I want to address today.  First though, I wanted to mention a couple of housekeeping items which will impact my future posts. 

This year marks 14 years since I began publishing a series of blog posts, and in that 14 years I have managed to channel a lot of ideas into these, and it has been rewarding.  I have also been able to sort of make my own archive of these posts in that I publish them in bound form every couple of years - it used to be every year, but in the past few years I have not written as frequently.  Up to that point, I was essentially printing those out and keeping them in binders, but at times printing multi-page blog articles can be challenging as it does expend a lot of resources.  However, when I published my first books 10 years ago, I came across a service called Lulu Publishing, and they have been a huge asset with getting things printed in a nice format and fashion.  So, I have not printed out blogs in several years, as I just wait and have them all published into book form myself.  If any of you are interested in getting printed editions of these blogs, please feel free to reach out and I will be glad to accommodate you.  I will ask for a small charge though to help my own income as well as covering the price of printing and production via Lulu, but if you enjoyed any content by all means feel free to ask and we can work out a deal.  That now leads to my second item of discussion before I get into today's reflections for the week. 

Since 2011, I have maintained three blog pages.  The oldest, Sacramental Present Truths, mainly addressed theological as well as some social/political issues.  The second, David's Mountain Memories, is this one - it primarily initially served as a platform to discuss a whole lot of topics of interest, and had a more light-hearted tone.  The third, David's Culinary Page, is my food blog - it contains restaurant reviews, recipes, and other culinary material.  Given that my doctoral dissertation has taken up much of my time in the past year in particular, I haven't been able to devote as much time to writing freelance like this, so after some thought I have come to a decision.  Effective immediately, I will no longer be publishing anything on SPT, and instead this page will incorporate both that content as well as the other content I put on here.  In time, I may also incorporate the culinary material into this blog as well, and I am actually thinking of leaving Blogspot, which hosts this, and consolidating all my writings on a new platform - I am looking into things such as Wordpress and some others to see what can be offered, and once I have the opportunity to plan it out, I may do that later. But, for my regular readers, don't fret just yet - that could be a couple of years away, so you can still enjoy content here for a while longer.  Also, as I am now 54 years old, and also am devoting much time to other pursuits, I am also planning on revisiting retiring the blogs completely when I reach my 60th birthday.  Over the next few years, as I contemplate my postdoctoral future, I am planning on devoting more writing to actual books, and won't have the time to maintain a blog at some point.  Any rate, I will keep you posted of any developments here. 

Writing has been a strength I have had since I was very young - it is the perfect way to organize my thoughts and express myself.  My writing legacy has undergone an evolution over several years in all honesty, as originally it started out with journaling 28 years ago.  Being frustrated as a young man with no creative outlet, my ex-wife Barbara then suggested I keep a journal, and it was a good idea.  Not long after starting journaling in August of 1996, one day I was talking to my mother about our old dog Jill we had when I was a kid, and that discussion made a bit of a lightbulb pop in my head - it was the genesis of the extended life story project I have been working on.  The life story began as just reflections in my journal, and that initial draft took over 2 years to document.  Later, I decided to incorporate it into its own book, and I have a series of notebooks now documenting my whole life story from as far back as I could remember to the present - I update it every year as well now.  After my doctorate program is complete and I get to a place where I have the time to do it, my plans are to typeset the whole manuscript, edit it, add facts I was unclear on or may have omitted due to not recalling them, and then I want to get that bound in book form.  It will never be available for public sale though, as I only plan on printing a limited number of them and those will go to my potential descendants as well as a copy being donated to my hometown library as a resource for researching local history.  I am doing this to safeguard against any liabilities that may potentially be risked, in that I am very candid and detailed in everything within that manuscript, even down to names.  It is important to not have that widely circulated until at least after my passing.  If all works out, I want to publish that in two large volumes - the first is a genealogy of my complete family tree, which is quite extensive.  It will contain all the pedigree charts as well as some stories of certain ancestors of mine who are of special interest to me.  The second volume then will be all my story from about the time of my birth until my 60th birthday - yes, this like the blogs will be a project I conclude when I am 60, and I have reasons for that timeline as well. Before I get into what I actually wanted to talk about, I wanted to share a bit of wisdom based on this for especially younger people. 

There is no dispute that the times we live in right now are crazy - just turn on any news broadcast and you will see it.  Much of that is due to a general issue in our society, where a sort of postmodern iconoclasm has reached epidemic proportions in our society.  It is commonplace now for historical revisionism to take over the academy, and the destruction of statues, important art work, and even literature seems to be what the psychopaths who embrace such iconoclasm are championing.  From a purely spiritual perspective, I believe this is all demonic activity.  The ugly, the deceptive, and the evil have overtaken society in many places, and they have uprooted what are traditionally believed to be divinely given transcendental properties of our being, namely three - beauty, truth, and goodness. While there is always hope, and indeed it will reverse course in due time, it is vital at the present time that as much of one's personal legacy should be preserved as is possible.  This is why I strongly advocate for journaling and documenting even the most minute aspects of one's life in a tangible form, and then safeguarding it.  A form of detailed personal expression may be what saves Western civilization from cannibalizing itself, and I especially encourage young people to get into the habit of journaling.  Besides, journaling is a way to challenge ideas and other things into an expressive form to produce other work, such as books and other productions.  Creativity is an attribute of God, and it must be appreciated and valued.  We each have a degree of this within us as well, and it is our individual expression of it that makes it important to our society.  The so-called "cancel culture" of the epidemic disease of "wokeness" wants to sacrifice that in order to enforce a totalitarian groupthink upon every person on earth, and it is aided by billionaire oligarchs who meet every year in a town in Switzerland and attempt to conspire to control every aspect of individual lives, even down to the very thoughts an individual has.  It is important to resist this totalitarian BS that the elites try to push on us, and if we do so, we do as James 5 challenges us - resist the devil (and these oligarchs are controlled by him, no doubt!) and he will flee from you.  The greatest fear of any totalitarian demagogue is that people think for themselves, and if they can see through the smokescreen, it will threaten their control over the world.  Many will dismiss that as "conspiracy" or something dredged up by Alex Jones or something but examine the facts for yourself - we saw it with Hitler, with Stalin, and even as far back as Robespierre during the French Revolution.  Totalitarianism in any form, whether practiced by Hitler or by Bill Gates, is demonic at its origin and it goes against the nature God gave us.  Therefore, it needs to be resisted.  The resistance does not have to be violent or revolutionary - it can be expressed as easily as keeping a personal journal to preserve the real story in a time of oppression.  And our youngest people need to be the torch for this, but anyone can do that as well.  Anyway, enough said on that. 

Now that I got that off my proverbial chest, let me get into what I wanted to talk about.  This past week, two very important reminders were planted in my soul that made me begin to think about something - what happened to the passion I once had in certain areas?  The first of those reminders came from my parish priest, Fr. Timothy Grassi.  In his Easter homily this past Sunday at my parish (St. James the Greater in Charles Town, WV), Fr. Grassi said something that got my attention.  While focusing on Christ's Passion on Good Friday leading to the Resurrection on Easter Sunday, Fr. Grassi notes that we find hope in that - in many ways, we all experience a Good Friday episode at some point in our lives, where we feel like we too are dying inside.  But, hope should not be lost, in that a resurrection is coming.  I have felt like I was laying in a tomb myself over the past couple of years, much like Jesus did on the Holy Saturday before Easter.  I am in no way comparing myself to Jesus, as I am not even close - the analogy refers to how he chose to redeem us by taking on our sufferings.  However, in my particular case, a series of circumstances that have transpired over the past four years - a divorce, the deaths of both my parents and my last surviving grandparent, economic challenges which almost threatened even my home, and other things - have gotten me off course concerning things I used to enjoy and would get excited about.  I have felt like something was really missing in my life, even I could say like a fish out of water.  Transitions in life are never easy though, and when going through those it is easy to feel like you just exist and have no real purpose.  The uncertainty haunts and plagues you every morning as you wake up, and that at times can really cause problems.  As another example, you feel like you are set adrift in a small boat on a large ocean with no paddle or rudder, and it makes one lose perspective. That has been me the past several years.  All that has happened to me has shaken me up somewhat, and to be honest it has led to shouting matches with God, and days where I just don't feel much of anything.  Call it a "funk," or the spiritual "dark night of the soul," but it is not a good place to be.  That then reminded me of a couple of other things that started to come to mind I wanted to reflect on with you today.

Back in my early 20s, I was caught up in the Pentecostal movement and was part of a denomination called the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.  That all culminated after an event that occurred on June 19, 1989. I was fresh out of high school, and was getting prepared to go off to college that Fall. So, I stayed with my dad in Brunswick, GA that summer, and just prior to that I received a graduation gift of some money and invested it in a new book that came out a year earlier, Gary McGee's Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements.  To this point, I had belonged to a small Southern Baptist church in my town of Terra Alta, WV, and was part of that from the time I was baptized on February 9, 1986, in another Baptist church in Kingwood, WV.  Due to some bad experiences and faulty theology my mother had, I became very ambivalent to Pentecostalism after my own conversion, and wanted nothing to do with that.  But, Dr. McGee's book changed me, and as I started warming up to Pentecostalism again, during my summer while I was at my dad's I began visiting a small Pentecostal Holiness church in Brunswick that today is called the Potter's Wheel Church, and the lady pastor, Sister Mayfield, was very helpful for me during that time.  That June, the church had this revival and an evangelist from Michigan was preaching, and during one sermon I felt like he was speaking directly to me, and I felt this urge to get this "baptism of the Holy Spirit."  So, at the altar call, I went forward, and a group of very devout old Pentecostal ladies of that church - they had long dresses, "glory buns" and all - were surrounding me and praying over me.  At that point, I felt in my gut this bubbling feeling, and next thing I knew I was saying things I didn't understand!  I had at that point received what was called Spirit baptism, and what I was doing was speaking in unknown tongues. It was actually quite a powerful experience in all honesty, and I do not doubt that it was something real.  So, I go off to Bible college that fall - at a Baptist school! - and within a year I had left the Southern Baptists and joined a local Foursquare congregation in nearby Midland City, AL.  I chose Foursquare mainly because at that time I was a big disciple of the guy who was perhaps their best-known minister, Dr. Jack Hayford.  The experience in that particular church would not prove to be great (it was actually a traumatic experience of spiritual abuse later), and that story is for another time, but it galvanized my own newfound Pentecostal experience and led to being introduced to other things, such as personal prophecy, and that is where I want to go next with this because it is the second important thing that came to mind this week. 

At the Foursquare church in Alabama I attended, in late 1990 a guy started attending who talked a lot about the restoration of "prophets and apostles" in the Church, and he was associated with a nondenominational Charismatic organization in Destin, FL, called Christian International Ministries.  CI, as it was abbreviated, was founded by a former Pentecostal minister named Bill Hamon, and it was associated with this new emphasis on modern-day prophets and apostles that was starting to catch on in Pentecostal circles then. At that time, they had these Friday night "Schools of the Prophets" down there, and given it was about 60 miles away from us, my future wife Barbara, a friend from school, and myself visited down there.  The church at that time was just getting off the ground, but it had a small sanctuary which was packed to capacity.  On this particular night, they had a speaker there named Tom Nicholson, and as was practice at the end of these meetings there was a sort of altar call for people to be prophesied over.  When it came my turn, Tom began to pray over me, and the prophecy he gave me was quite interesting (I still have this on tape too) - he said he saw me at the bottom of a deep well, and I was feeling like no one was there to help me out, but then the Lord appeared himself and delivered me.  There were other details that are not relevant to the story that I now believe pointed to my eventual reception into the Catholic Church, but that prophecy came to mind this week as I began to reflect on things.  I want to first give some clarification and then I want to get into that part of the story.

I am no longer a Pentecostal, nor do I identify as one. Many of the practices of self-proclaimed "prophets" and "apostles" are just ridiculous, if not downright manipulative or even heretical.  I still very much believe that prophecy can happen, and that God does show us things, but over the years thankfully the Church has helped me to mature.  So, despite my own story, please do not think that I am in any way endorsing non-Catholic Pentecostal "prophets" or anything like that - far from it actually.  However, just like in Numbers when God used a jackass to speak to Balaam, I believe God can use some things, despite their flaws, to give one insight.  While some of what the person may be shown may not be evident for years after the fact, God allows it to give us perspective on situations we may find ourselves thrust into.  That is how I view many earlier experiences when I was a young Christian, and I think it is justified to say that my Christianity didn't begin when I became a Catholic - I knew I was a Christian long before I took that step, but the Catholic Church helped complete that work.  So, at the risk of stirring up controversy with some of my more traditionalist friends, I do believe Protestants are Christians, and have no doubt many of them do have a sincere faith in Christ.  I just see the Catholic faith as completing that work, that is all. 

That experience of being given that word from Tom Nicholson brought to mind my journey.  I mentioned many times before that I came into the Catholic Church as a process, and that process started many years before in a similar way that other people found their way home.  In the early 1990s a movement called "Convergence" began to attract many of us who identified as Pentecostals.  I explained this movement as being a way to integrate "three streams" of Christian expression - Evangelical, Charismatic, Liturgical - into a new thing which would restore Christianity to its fullness.  This movement, as I noted in earlier posts you can refer back to, had its roots in a meeting in 1977 in Chicago in which Dr. Robert Webber, Fr. Peter Gillquist, and other former Protestants began to articulate a need to revive ancient faith by integrating it with the positive aspects of their respective denominational traditions.  This "convergence" of different streams of Christian expression was seen as restorative in that many denominational traditions often emphasized one while eschewing the others, and thus an incomplete Christianity emerged.  One of the groups that grew out of this was comprised of a number of former Pentecostals and nondenominational Charismatics who embraced the Anglican liturgical tradition and thus formed the Charismatic Episcopal Church as early as 1992 I believe.  A very prominent nondenominational Charismatic minister, Malcolm Smith, later joined the CEC and became eventually a bishop.  He has perhaps one of the most insightful liturgical studies ever produced called The Power of the Holy Spirit in Liturgy, and in all honesty, I need to listen to those again.  Bishop Smith though is important here in this discussion for another reason.  In one of his teachings from some years back, he was discussing 2 Corinthians 5:17, which says this - "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and all things have become new."  It is the last part of that verse which Smith focused on, and he proposed something very radical that makes a lot of sense.  I want to now talk a bit about that, as it relates to my whole experience recently. 

There are two parts to this discussion I am going to deal with, one being theological and the other personal.  The theological aspect must rest on one principle - all Scripture is the inspired Word of God, and no passage in Scripture can contradict another.  It is the same message throughout, and thus consistent.  Context here means everything.  So, the first thing we note in Genesis is that as God created the heavens and earth in that 7-day period, he would conclude each segment of the creation with the words "it is good."  Let's start there, and then we move onto Psalm 24:1, which proclaims "the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, the world and all who dwell therein."  It is one reason as well why the Church as a whole has always taught the importance of the transcendental properties of being - Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.  What God creates is good, and therefore it should be accepted with joy as a blessing from him.  However, in parallel movements both among Protestant Evangelical/Fundamentalists and the postmodern crazies that want to destroy statues and paintings, there is this quasi-Gnostic mentality that all matter is somehow evil and thus is not worthy of preservation and love.  I remember hearing ad nauseum from televangelists and preachers in pulpits in some Pentecostal churches as a younger man such crazy phrases as "in the natural," "it's the flesh talking," and other BS.  Coupled with that was their treating of the concept of tradition as if it were the F-bomb, and even the mention of the word by someone would call into question their very salvation.  I always thought this was insane, and in reality what they were proposing could not be implemented in practice, due to the fact our own human nature does have an aesthetic dimension and we are - God forgive me for paraphrasing Madonna! - "material people in a material world."  It is not our fault - God created this world, and he created us to live in it.  So, what thankfully Bishop Smith understood about the verse in 2 Corinthians was absolutely truthful - God doesn't replace Creation, but he can renew it.  This in turn would be in line with what both Bonaventure and Aquinas taught about supernatural grace - it elevates, heals, and renews nature, because Nature is a "book" authored by God Himself just like "Revelation" is. It doesn't mean we worship nature or anything about it, but it does mean we appreciate it and always see God's creative hand in it.  That alone dispels a lot of bad theology that has been mouthed from pulpits for years by well-meaning but ignorant Pentecostal, Evangelical, and Fundamentalist ministers.  Likewise, it exposes the demonic irrationality of the "woke" mobs who are making news by trying to destroy anything that "offends" them.  This is a lesson that needs to be taught more, and I may revisit it later myself in a future post here.  

On a more personal dimension regarding Malcolm Smith's insights on this verse, I want to begin by explaining the analogy of a structure - let's say, a house.  Every house has a foundation, walls, ceilings, etc., and as often happens, with the passage of time some components of that structure do deteriorate.  A brick in the foundation may crumble, the cement which bonds the bricks together may not have been mixed right, or something that enhances the structure may drop off or be lost in some way.  If a brick is faulty in a house, you don't just tear down the whole house - no, you repair the brick by replacing it with a new brick that will strengthen the integrity of the foundation.  Same principle if a part of the house that may be aesthetic or is integral to the overall design - if it gets stolen, damaged by elements and falls off, or is just lost, you don't want to necessarily replace it with something that is unrelated to the original, do you?  Of course not!  You reconstruct and restore that missing component as close as the original, but maybe with some improvements to prevent damage or loss.  In the same way, one's life may be in need of a little renovation, but you don't necessarily replace it with something totally different, do you?  There is an epidemic of self-denial among many Evangelical and Fundamentalist traditions in regard to the past - they want to throw out anything that does not align with their worldview, and they compel their members to do this as well.  Recently, I have been reading Jeri Massi's experiences with Baptist Fundamentalism, and she wrote an excellent book about it entitled Bitter Root: Atheistic Practices Embedded in Christian Fundamentalism (Jupiter Rising Books, 2013).  On page 59 of this book, Massi notes that many Fundamentalists base their mentality not only on a quasi-Gnostic understanding of nature, but upon even modern (and abhorrent) psychological theories such as those of B.F. Skinner and Ivan Pavlov - the elimination of belief in conscience, in human will, and in human self-determination.  In doing this, it is easy to see why they would eschew the past, even for many people as individuals, and they will even go as far as to say that embracing the good aspects of one's past is a bad thing.  Why??  Thankfully, the teaching of the Catholic Church is a lot more logical and charitable in that it encourages embracing the good of one's past while also learning from the bad.  The misunderstanding in regard to that later aspect is that many people think that you should totally suppress the negative aspects of one's past.  This is not healthy, but it also is not a way for someone to be honest with themselves.  Scars will remain, and on occasion someone will initiate looking at that scar - maybe they are going through something that caused your scar, and your experience could help them, which is why God allowed the scar in the first place.  This is what makes Malcolm Smith's insight so relevant - God is not trying to destroy anything to replace it with something foreign, but rather he restores us by leading us to embrace those things which helped us grow, and a few blemishes are left on our structure to remind us that we overcame hurts and challenges and grew beyond them without denying they happened.  That being established, let me now tell you what I got from that this week.

I remember as a young man, and even fairly recently, being passionate about certain things and I derived a sense of purpose from all that which really excited me and motivated me to do many things.  However, in the past several years, life smothered much of that passion, and I almost forgot what it was about.  I had this urge to reflect upon some things about my own faith journey this past week, which is why Malcolm Smith came to my attention - he was a very influential voice in my own spiritual journey, and I owe becoming Catholic in part to him.  When I read that statement of his, it really touched the core of my being, and it was one of those "aha!" moments in my life where I realized I was missing something.  We have all felt a little "off" at some point in our lives - uncertainty, lack of direction, etc.  So, we cry out to God to give us that, and what he sometimes says is "look within yourself."  Of course, once that realization hits, then comes the next step - where do I take this now? How do I recover my old passion for this or that?  I am still figuring this out even as I write this, but one of the inspirations I did get from it was to actually write more in my blogs again.  And, more than likely, God has it orchestrated for this to maybe touch and impact someone else.  If that is you, I challenge you today to look within yourself, ask "what am I missing?" and then definitely keep your journal - if you don't have one already, start one.  The more self-discovery you begin to do, the more it will help you.  It is another way to say that at times the answer to our individual dilemma may be right in front of us, or in this case inside us.  Time to draw it out and reflect upon it if that is the case. 

I know I had a lengthy missive this week, but I am attempting to relaunch myself as I seek to get back in touch with the person I am as well. Please pray for me, and may God's guidance be with you as well.  See you next time. 

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!