Monday Morning Music Ministry

6-22-20

Pick and choose. It should be the new motto of the United States, surely more appropriate than e pluribus unum – “out of many, one.”

In fact we have become a culture that can be described as “out of many: many more.” No more unity. Only a push for uniformity.

It explains the New Abnormal for every totalitarian, from news anchors to street thugs: reliance on lies, half-truths, and intimidation. “Never mind what I told you,” W C Fields once barked at a caddy; “You do what I tell you!”

So the rest of the population, the vast majority, obeys or shuts up. Looting, vandalism, destruction, attacks, theft, and murder… most Americans watch on TV as if the events are parts of a bad cop show. What can we do? Change the (virtual) channel, is peoples’ mindset.

What Americans mostly do is what every decaying society throughout history has done. We pick and choose. We might express solidarity, or sign petitions, or express concern, unless “there, by the grace of God, go I.” Unless it is our shop being stripped bare; our neighborhood being terrorized; our friends or our police being murdered.

We pick and choose our outrage; pick and choose our sympathy. We have picked, and have chosen, to be blind fools.

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Pearl Harbor came quickly upon most citizens. And like on that morning, we suddenly find ourselves in the middle of a world war. Or the Second American Revolution? The pandemic, whether really random or orchestrated, muddies that calculation. But as urban rioting and destruction by strangely similar black-clad shock troops appear in cities of the world that never heard of George Floyd – or otherwise have little contact with black lives – “World War” is the apt description.

The utter outrage of public streets taken over; of public art being wantonly vandalized and ruined; of police being proscribed, attacked, and killed; of officials condoning and encouraging such savagery; all on top of occasional video-looped bad police actions – is nothing but nihilism. Definition: deadly anarchy aimed not at racism but at you and me; at the American Republic; at Western Civilization.

The battle theaters in this Third World War are not randomly chosen, and certainly are not spontaneous. We see the same black costumes, the same tactics, the same bundles of bricks.

And the same willing dupes at the fringes of rallies, in parades, occasionally pushed into the crossfire. Well-meaning moms and kids. Nature abhors a vacuum, so when when supine leaders accommodate, the radical Left provides leaders. When police are silenced, the radical Left provides street thugs. When small business owners – tragically, many of them black entrepreneurs – lose their life’s dreams, the radical Left provides a new socialist-style economy.

These templates, by the way, were outlined in the handbook Rules For Radicals by Saul Alinsky, two of whose students were Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

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Christianity has become a Pick and Choose religion in America. Perhaps consumerism and national wealth has encouraged flaccid faith, the abandonment of Biblical standards. After all, who needs God when we have Social Security and Medicare, and TV comedies or music on hand-helds 24/7, and 12-step programs for everything? Not to mention drugs and booze and…

Welcome to America, 2020. And for many of those who still attend church, many denominations are Pick and Choose too. Biblical truths are bent, or ignored. Doctrine is regarded as mistaken or outdated. God’s words about morality and responsibility are, well… you Pick and Choose what’s “right” for yourself. Honk if you love Jesus.

Of course, a god who allows such “beliefs” is not a God at all. Suddenly, the God of our fathers has changed from “the Great I AM” into “the Great I MIGHT.”

I drag the Lord into this because He should be at the center of all our discussions, decisions, and values; as natural as the breaths we draw. But… we are, instead, suffocating as a nation these days, not healthily breathing.

Every day of the spreading stain of anarchy and nihilism might mean a year or so of restoration. Streets can be cleaned; windows replaced; graffiti sand-blasted. The replacement of statues would be decades of sickening, useless debates, and probably futile. Warped views of society – especially the perceptions of youngsters – might be irretrievable.

Perpetrators are likely never to face justice, despite starring on news videos. The American public, stretched thin from the plague and the anarchy, will have extra tax burdens from the clean-ups. Rather, this nightmare will likely continue, with more defecation, more defaced statues, more cultural heritage obliterated from national life – worse than when Stalin merely airbrushed his enemies out of photographs.

The prime offenders are the conspiratorial black-clad thugs, of course. I do not blame police (I mean for their lack of riot response); if my son were a cop I would advise him against suiting up for what has become a daily suicide mission. But the guiltiest parties are these: those who have choreographed these events, whether directed and funded by Soros or others; and elected officials in America. National “leaders” rattle swords, but their inaction invites more thuggery. And local “leaders” have been radical moles waiting for these opportunities, or hiding behind radical slogans because they are moral cowards.

In any event this national disgrace will outlive burned police stations, ruined public art, and broken businesses and life-dreams. As I said, this is a stain that spreads easily and in every direction. And will be hard to wash out.

It is coming to your neighborhood. Your city hall, your public library, your local shops. Maybe your home’s windows and front doors and parked cars. The choice of responding will be one more case of picking and choosing: Accommodation with cowardice and surrender; or committed, righteous, action — physical and spiritual.

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Click: A New Birth of Freedom

6-19-17

The subject of this essay has been on my mind for some time, and was outlined before the assassination attempts at the Republican baseball practice this week. I will not intone about the “need for civility,” as many are doing and which of course I endorse. But I fear that such hopes are futile, and that was, and is, the sad conclusion I want to discuss.

First, what I substantially had written and still believe:

Donald Trump is likely to be assassinated. Of course I do not urge such I thing. I largely support him, and in fact am happy with his initiatives, and the president he has become. I will take one day – one hour – of his Administration to eight years of his predecessor.

So it is prudent for me to repeat that I do not favor nor encourage his assassination. Neither do I think that raising the topic will inspire any nutcase. To be precise, I am not even prophesying or predicting the heinous act. I am not in that business. I am only reckoning that a personal, physical attack is likely, given the arc of ugliness, violence, threats, and extremism – not infesting politics in general, which is the case, but specifically directed toward President Trump.

Not occasionally; not every day; but virtually every hour since his election. It grows uglier and bloodier. It serves no reason to claim that candidate Trump suggested that thugs at his rallies be given the bum’s rush, or other coarseness; everybody, even leftist protesters, were taught by their mommies that two wrongs don’t make a right. And blue-haired ladies at Tea Party rallies cannot be conflated with Antifas or Bernie and Hillary supporters who set cars on fire and smash store windows.

Ugly words that quickly turned to violence, and “satire” that transformed itself into an ISIS-like depiction of a decapitated President, or his bloody murder on a New York stage, inevitably will inspire weak minds to turn thoughts to deeds.

More, I fully believe that the despicable act can be committed not by an impressionable left-wing nitwit, but by a celebrity. An actor or actress, a “journalist,” a celebrity whose access to a president is easier to achieve than among normal, sane, folks.

John Wilkes Booth was a prominent actor in his day. The moment people heard of Lincoln’s assassination, they immediately recognized Booth’s name. Today, it could be a Baldwin brother, or a Maddow, or a Madonna. I suppose many leftists would be happy to do the deed and be considered martyrs. In a nation virtually free of the death penalty, the perpetrator would a) be considered a hero by half the country; and b) serve less than a life sentence.

Does any reader think this is implausible? Booth thought Lincoln a “baboon” who ruined the South (while the Reconstruction President would have been the defeated South’s best friend). Garfield’s assassin Guiteau was disappointed that he had not received a political appointment; the president represented a faction different than Guiteau’s. That was it.

McKinley’s assassin Czolgosz was an anarchist, plain and simple. Largely forgotten by history is the fact that between the 1880s and World War I there was a worldwide epidemic of bombings and political assassinations. Royalty; elected leaders; prominent businessmen – dozens were killed by anarchists and leftists, down to the “match” that lit the fires of the Great War in 1914: the murder of an Austrian archduke by a Serbian nationalist.

When Theodore Roosevelt was shot point-blank in the chest during the Bull Moose campaign (and, with the bullet in him and blood pouring from the wound, he insisted on delivering his 90-minute speech) it was by an unemployed bartender whose “mind” was inflamed by newspaper editorials calling TR a tyrant.

Given the fever-temperature of our political health these days, an attack on President Trump seems not unlikely.

So. This week an apparently average liberal activist and Bernie backer, after months of stalking, and preparing a written hit-list of Republicans found in his pocket, targeted an enclosed field of GOP politicians warming up for a charity baseball game. That his guns were legal and registered, and he was a liberal, there were few calls for the Second Amendment to be repealed. That nobody died, and only a few people maimed, liberals felt safe, outside the comments and prayers at second base during the game, to blame Trump’s “rhetoric” and other diversions.

The New York Times even wrote, immediately, about Gabby Gifford’s attack six years previous, citing a Sarah Palin campaign sheet with “targeted” Congressional districts. Aside from the canard, “equivalency” is losing its meaning in the United States of Alinsky.

Should we remind ourselves?

During the campaign (thanks for notes to The Daily Caller), anti-Trump protesters attacked, pushed, spit on, and verbally harassed attendees forced to walk a “gauntlet” as they left a Trump fundraiser in Minneapolis, and beat an elderly man. Protesters also attacked Trump’s motorcade;

Protesters in El Cajon CA, chased and beat up a Trump supporter;

A GOP office in North Carolina was firebombed and spray-painted with “Nazi Republicans get out of town or else”;

The president of Cornell University’s College Republicans was assaulted the night after Trump won the election;

Maryland high school students punched a student who was demonstrating in support of Trump, and then kicked him repeatedly while he was on the ground;

California GOP Rep. Tom McClintock had to be escorted to his car after a town hall because of angry protesters. The tires of at least four vehicles were slashed;

Protestors knocked a 71-year-old female staffer for California GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher unconscious during a protest outside the representative’s office;

Milo Yiannopoulos’ speech at the University of California-Berkeley was canceled after rioters set the campus on fire and threw rocks through windows. Milo tweeted that one of his supporters wearing a Trump hat was thrown to the ground and kicked. Ann Coulter and other speakers have been prevented from speaking on campuses;

Protesters at Middlebury College rushed the conservative Dr Charles Murray and Prof Allison Stranger, pushing and shoving Murray and grabbing Stranger by her hair and twisting her neck as they were leaving a campus building. Stranger suffered a concussion. Protesters then surrounded the car they got into, rocking it back and forth and jumping on the hood;

Republican Rep. Tom Garrett, his family, and his dog were targeted by a series of repeated death threats deemed credible by authorities;

-FBI agents arrested a person for threatening to shoot Republican Rep. Martha McSally over her support for Trump;

-Police in Tennessee charged a woman for allegedly trying to run Republican Rep. David Kustoff off the road;

After the shooting of Rep Steve Scalise and others, GOP Rep Claudia Tenney received an email threat that read, “One down, 216 to go.”

These were overt acts. Following is a list complied by Breitbart News of threats spoken and threatened by the celebrities I spoke of earlier. It is not unreasonable to foresee one of these people, or simple minds inflamed by them, to follow through:

Kathy Griffin “beheads” Trump in a graphic photo

Madonna – “I’ve thought a lot about blowing up the White House”

Snoop Dogg “shoots” Trump in the head in music video

Robert De Niro: “I’d like to punch him in the face”

Joss Whedon: “I want a rhino to [F—] Paul Ryan to death”

Shakespeare in the Park stabs “Trump” to death in performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

Rapper YG threatens Trump in “[F—] Donald Trump” song

Marilyn Manson kills “Trump” in music video.

A New Jersey “Democratic Strategist” issued a statement the day after Rep Scalise’s shooting that the attack might have been deserved, echoing comments by elected Democrats across the country. Surely, there were many sincere offerings of regret by the political establishment. Nancy Pelosi’s impromptu comments from the House well were eloquent and heartfelt, about Scalise’s recovery, and about political amity.

Will these expressions bear fruit? They did not, after 9-11; the state of our nation grew bitterer.

Winston Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government, until you consider every other. Democracy gone wild is what we have in America today, and the world, similar but worse than 125 years ago: akin to anarchy. The outrageous has become normal. People’s own agendas are considered not only more valid, but exclusively valid, over opponents… and “opponents” have become “enemies” today.

People throughout history have debated with opponents. But enemies are deemed deserving of being killed. This paradigm is what is unfolding in America today.

Welcome to the End Times. Your road map can be II Timothy 3: 1-5: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God — having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof. Have nothing to do with such people.

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click: Trauermusik (Funeral Music) Marche Funebre by Chopin