Today is Wednesday

Some day I will die. That is just a fact of life. Fairy tales about people living forever or being immortal here on Earth do not ring true with me. No, I am not sick and suffering from some dread disease. What I am is an old realist. No matter how hard we try, we cannot outrun the inevitable.

Shortly after my son learned to walk we got a harness for him and used it when we took him out with us. He was able to run free for about four feet, but we still had control of him. There was not much he could do without us reining him in.

My relationship with GOD is much like that. Scripture tells us that HE will never leave us nor forsake us. I believe HIM, HIS Word, everything. There are things that I do not fully understand, some that totally elude my feeble mind. But like my son who believed me, I believe GOD. GOD has me tethered to HIM. I can stray, but not too far. If I pull against the tether long enough I can stretch it just a bit and wiggle my toes near the fire of disobedience. That is when the tug on the tether reminds me I have gone too far. If my toes get burned bad enough, HE will, like any good Father, take me to HIS home permanently. Earthly fathers cannot do anything permanent but GOD can and does. Fear not the one who can only kill the body but, definitely fear THE ONE who can kill both body and soul.

May 1-3, 1971 vs January 6, 2022

I worked in Washington District of Columbia in the United States of America for several years. The building I worked in was at the 1700 block of K Street. We were told that despite the anti-war demonstrations within DC we were required to report to work and on time. Calling in sick was not an option.

Riding into DC that Monday on my regular bus was not a problem. When the bus stopped is when the unthinkable happened. A police officer tossed a tear gas canister under the bus in order to slow down people exiting the bus. We were all in danger of being arrested. All for going to work. Detained from the bus, was any young man who had long hair. The rest of us simply stumbled away from the bus trying to see through the tears to get to our jobs. About 15 feet from the bus was a couple (obviously hippies) who had a table set up with literature about tear gas and how to take care of yourself. I took a leaflet and a damp tissue and made my way to the office.

When I made it home that evening, the news reports that as many as 23,000 people (supposed demonstrators) were arrested and detained at the Kennedy Stadium where the Redskins played football. People who worked in DC were detained simply because they “looked like they should be arrested”. The mail guy in our offices was detained for several days. He said they did not ask him any questions, they just grabbed him before he entered the building to go to work. He was just feet away from work when he was caught.

The estimated number of “protestors” was about 40,000. They said what they would do and did it. They drove junk cars onto the roads going into DC, parked them, took the keys out and jammed up every road coming into DC in basically that manner. They did not storm DC with guns blazing.

Non-participating citizens who were arrested and had need of insulin or other medications were denied access to even call someone much less obtain medical attention. The city was standing firm and not backing down. Those people were in DC so they must be GUILTY. No, most were just trying to go to work like they were told to do by their employers.

On January 6, 2022 I was watching TV while the million or so folks were marching down the street. And just like in 1971, it was no surprise that a large crowd of people would be there. It was, after all President Trump supporters who would be there. He always drew large numbers of supporters to his rallies as well as a few pinheads, protestors and other nitwits. So, instead of beefing up security and calling in the National Guard as President Trump suggested to Nancy Pelosi and the Mayor of DC it almost seemed like they had Law Enforcement take a holiday. Were they hoping something would happen that could be blamed on a certain someone?

The Mock Jan 6 Trial, the raid of Mar-a-Lago, political supporters being rounded up and put in jail all seems just a bit too familiar. I learned about it in World History Class as well as American History Class. I have also watched it unfold in Venezuela and other parts of the world in more recent history.

Politics suck. Especially when it runs rampant over the Constitution of the United States of America. It is extremely difficult to even say that the Justice system is equally applied as it should be when murderers, rapists and terrorists roam free while they spend billions of dollars desperately trying to convict one orange haired man and make his family’s and friends’ lives a living hell simply because they hate him. Donald J. Trump did something in two years that those pompous fools in Congress could not do in the past 50 years, he worked for and defended the people who put him in office.

And this is my opinion. You may believe something else.

Surveys and the Misrepresentation of Facts and Opinions

I took a survey yesterday. One that has been done for 50 years and they are quite proud of that. Since 1972 this survey has been gathering information regarding the Social inner workings of the United States of America and possibly the world. My curiosity overcame my better judgement and I sat through two hours of questions. Some were rather innocuous, like my race, gender, religious beliefs and my upbringing.

The questions, probably ninety percent, are ambiguous leading to answers that are greatly taken out of context.

For instance: If a man were to get up in public and say hateful things about black people and a bill came up to abolish that speach, would you; agree that it needed to be abolished, agree somewhat, disagree, or disagree somewhat. Now if you agree, you are ultimately saying that free speech is problematic. If you disagree then you are ultimately saying that hate speech is okay and you agree with it.

It asked the same about Muslims spewing hate speach – should they be allowed to say it. The same type of questions were asked about religion. They separated spirituality and religion which I thought was odd. There were a lot of questions about HIV, which I thought the Government was saying is under control. Now, I wonder what they are not saying about that and many other things.

I was reassured numerous times that this was not a government study and was in no way connected to the government. (Me thinks thou doth protest too much!) And that my answers were going to be totally anonymous. Another one of those “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” statements swept through my mind.

There were also the monetary spending questions. “Are we spending too much or not enough to …” I asked who “we” is supposed to represent. Is it the government or is it the people in general or is it both? The interviewer did not know. He was just asking the questions put forth in the survey on the tablet that was connected to the internet. Since the whole thing was supposedly recorded, I told him that I would be answering the questions as though it is the government only that is referenced by “we‘.

After two hours of questioning and a sore butt, I can understand why the media thinks there may be a group of radical, right wing, nut jobs out there just waiting to be activated. And it is far from the truth. And they did ask if I owned guns and how many. Since that information can be obtained anyway, I answered honestly.

After thinking about the way my answers could be misconstrued or purposely twisted to fit a particular narrative, I question the wisdom of my participation.

And if one truly believes the government is not involved with this in some way here are some (taken from their own literature) of the organizations that sponsor and use the data:

American Cancer Society, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, The Rockerfeller Foundation, and Robert Woods Johnson Foundation.

The name behind the research is NORC and this is what the letters mean in their own words: “the nonpartisan and objective research organization NORC at the University of Chicago,”… I found very little that I would consider nonpartisan or objective about the questions asked or the answers one had to pick from. While on the surface it appears to be lollipops and rainbows, it is neither.

For it to be called valid research is tantamount to saying an ant equals an elephant. Neither are true. It defies logic that such generalized statements and equally bizarre answers that you must choose from can be called research.

This is my opinion and mine alone. No one paid me to say it. No one even knows I am saying it until now.