The November 11, 2022 edition of The Status Quo: An Electric Newsletter is dedicated to the misguided and confused Veterans who continue to support the former fake President of the United States in his campaign to destroy the U.S. Constitution. It appears they have forgotten their oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution against all enemies. It seems they have also forgotten that this promise does not end when one takes off the uniform or chooses to abandon that oath in the name of political expediency. The promise made them a part of something bigger than ourselves and more important than our own lives if called to sacrifice that life. They have not only betrayed their country, but they have also betrayed those with whom they have served.
Thou Shalt Kill
For many years it confounded this Veteran why so many Americans hated other Americans for no discernable reason other than holding different political views. I read and listened to the experts on voter trends, polls, etc. describe the phenomenon. I listened to the talking heads on network and cable news as they reported on the growing anger and violence leveled against Americans by Americans due to party affiliation. It simply defied belief that in a country where politics, politicians and governments have failed the American people so consistently and for so long that so many Americans could hate other Americans solely for holding different political opinions. It was only during the Pandemic that I realized why Americans are turning on themselves.
The career politician has so manipulated the fringe elements of their respective tribes that they are able to turn Americans upon each other in the name of re-election. In short, they have bottled hatred and are selling it to both fringes as the cure-all for what ails America. They convince the gullible and uninformed that the other party is destroying their idea of America and then fan the flames of hatred to create a nation divided by the fringe elements of two corrupt political parties operating in a corrupt political process.
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What is ironic is that the fringes of the two parties were once only a small minority in each party. The career politicians, hand-in-hand with the national media, have transformed the “lunatic left” and the “reprehensible right” into the mainstream. In doing so, they have placed us all in danger. As we watch the number of mentally disturbed young males attack schools, churches and supermarkets. we see just how sick many in our society have become. As we watch the former fake President of the United States promote violence by urging his Trumpettes to harm other Americans, we see just how sick our politics have become.
We cannot dispute that our national politics provides the world with a glimpse into our national life. We also cannot dispute that this glimpse paints an ugly picture. Likewise, we cannot dispute that America is producing more and more young men like Adam Lanza and Salvador Ramos everyday. As such, Americans must understand that in the coming years we are going to find more young males willing to kill dozens of innocent Americans because they believe it is the only option left to be heard. They hear the hatred spewing from the mouths of our nation’s leaders and will come to embrace that hatred within themselves. These angry and confused young men, some not even 18, will embrace hatred and violence as if it were a new religion just as they will see a degenerate like the former fake President of the United States as a role model for a new cowardly America.
During the Pandemic the number of young people suffering from anxiety and/or clinical depression skyrocketed. In 2020 for example, an estimated 4.1 % of adolescents aged 12-17 had at least one major depressive episode. This is the fertile ground from which tomorrow’s killers will grow. This combined with the disturbing facts about these males’ lives makes for a wave of mass shootings that even Americans cannot imagine. Today’s shootings will not be like those coming tomorrow just as the men from yesterday are not like the men of today. Young men today are very different from the men of the previous generations. Today’s males work less. They have less sex. They have fewer commitments. They are more likely to find their entertainment alone in their basements. Many shun socializing with their peers. Many of them think that a tersely worded tweet is the same as confronting wrongdoing. They judge others they do not know based solely on information from sources they do not know are telling the truth because we all know that it’s easier to hate than to learn.
The evidence supports the assertion regarding the ticking time bombs walking our streets. However, the reader is encouraged to search for themselves any information on the number of mentally unstable young males currently walking our streets so they understand when the new American male is raised in the ethos of the “social media” warrior and befriend others like him on-line the end result will be the massacre of more and more innocents. And if you think law enforcement is going to stop them, I encourage you to Google massacre in Uvalde. The legacy of Uvalde, TX is not that America is producing sicker and sicker young men. We know this already. The legacy of Uvalde is that law enforcement is impotent to stop them even when the shooter is in the next room killing children!
Jesus of the Disinherited
When this Newsletter was first posted 22 years ago, a Veteran had a dream of convincing Americans to hate the career politician like the Veteran hates the pedophile. It was a dream that neer came to fruition. Maybe it never came to fruition because it was based on a false premise. Maybe Americans really do not hate pedophiles. Sure, Americans claim to hate pedophiles, serial rapists and cold-blooded murders but hating them proves nothing. Everyone hates them. But by hating their fellow citizens for their misguided and dangerous political opinions, they prove to themselves and their social media family and friends how perceptive they are in really understanding what will make America great again. The lazy and ignorant love to hate because it is quite a bit easier than sacrificing and compromising for the common good.
Hating Obama was a sport to many “white” Americans who knew nothing of the man. Likewise, the hate spewed forth by “smarter” Americans at George W. Bush was so disgusting that it appeared as if hating had become the new national pastime. Sorry George baseball is for sissies. Notwithstanding this dose of reality, we need not search long to see what it is these haters have in common. They all have one thing in common. They are as far from Jesus Christ as one can imagine. They are also the Americans responsible for destroying faith in our election process and freedom of speech in our schools. So in an effort to pass this Veterans Day in peace, this Veteran decided to return to the thing that had provided sanctuary for decades. Books were an escape and a journey for this former Army Officer and it seemed right to return to a book that proved too difficult for an angry and confused 19 year old. Howard Thurman’s Jesus of the Disinherited (“Jesus”) is a book beyond the reach of many Americans and that speaks volumes in itself.
An initial attempt to read Mr. Thurman’s seminal work on Jesus Christ was made in the early 1980s when this Veteran was an undergraduate at Wayne State University. Unfortunately, the book proved too much for an unprepared 19 year-old. Many of the words Mr. Thurman used as well as the ideas and concepts he addressed were very difficult to follow, let alone understand. Jesus is not for the breaking news devotte or the snapchat crowd. In fact, it can be asserted with confidence that his work is beyond the intellectual capabilities of the hordes of “social media warriors” who spread hate because it makes them feel good.
What makes Jesus such an incredible book is that it contains the single best description of who Jesus was and what He wanted to teach us. Mr. Thurman puts aside His birth and resurrection and looks at Jesus and the environment into which he grew to manhood. Mr. Thurman takes us through the realities of the life of Jesus in order to not only teach us who Jesus was but also how Jesus must have felt about the major issues of the day. Love and Hate being two of the most prominent issues addressed in Jesus and they are coincidentally the two most important issues facing Americans today. It is not inflation or immigration that threatens the Republic. It is those who seem incapable of living in peace with their neighbors that are tearing at the fabric of our democracy. Hatred is all the rage in America 2022.
Jesus is divided into 5 chapters beginning with Jesus – An Interpretation. Mr. Thurman introduces us to his Jesus. The author describes to the reader a man who lives under Roman rule, comparing Jesus’ life with that of Paul, a Roman. Jesus was a member of a lower-class devoid of the rights and privileges to which Romans enjoyed and that fact was an important in Jesus’ life as one of the disinherited. The author presents questions that require serious contemplation. One might be so inclined to pray for help in honestly confronting these issues and our lives. Mr. Thurman shows us Jesus confronting the issues that confronted HIm everyday; issues that coincidently are as relevant today as they were 2,000 years ago.
Yet what really sets Jesus apart from other works on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ is the four chapters that follow. These chapters are titled Fear, Deception, Hate and Love. Fear and Deception perfectly describe how these twin tools of oppression work to keep those who are oppressed in a state of oppression. It is within these two chapters of Jesus that we come to understand how and why Jesus is for the disinherited. Also within these two chapters we also come to understand His message is one for the disinherited. We are also taught that His teachings leave us, the inherited, with only one conclusion. We, the inherited, are the oppressors. We promote ourselves and our interests while caring little or nothing for the disinherited. We have collectively left them to our failing governments just as we have left the safety of our children in the hands of career politicians.
It is said that Jesus Christ is the light of the world. Love was his message and He commanded us to love God and one another before all else. We never stand taller or more clearly demonstrate our Christian values than when we help the poor and downtrodden. Whether we serve meals to the hungry, raise money for a women and childrens’ shelter, act as Foster Parents, adopt an abandoned or abused child or spread the gospel of tolerance and empathy as the path to a better world, the end result is a way of life that embraces the message of Jesus Chirst. Mr. Thurman would agree.
As impressionable as the four chapters described above were on this Veteran, it was the chapter on Hate that led to this article. Hate is a growing business in America and the future looks even more favorable for the spread of this disease. Make no mistake. Hate is a disease. It spreads like a virus and Mr. Thurman gives us an example of how it spreads. (See pages 67-68 of the Beacon Press Books paperbak edition, 1976). The story of his ride in the same coach as a white woman and her hatred for him did not surprise me. The eastside of Detroit in the 1970s was not a bastion of racial harmony. This Veteran and former soldier of Christ had witnessed enough acts of racial violence by the age of thirteen to last a lifetime. Exactly how that woman’s hatred could affect others in the train carriage made me realize how Alex Jones became so popular despite being just another hate monger from Texas whose lies, slander and perversions hurt real people. It is time all Americans, especially those who call Texas home, wake-up to the hatred within ourselves and all around us. It is destroying our country one hate filled word at a time.
Every American must understand that It will be hate and not wildfires, floods, hurricanes, tornados or superstorms that destroy our Republic. Heat waves will kill countless Americans in the coming years but hate will kill the hope of what America might one day become. Hate will kill the idea that so many Veterans have fought and died to defend. Hate will also kill the “can do” American spirit that has saved this nation in the past and instead replace it with the “don’t have to” spirit of the new American male. Hate will blind us to our true enemies as they work to divide us, enrage us and then push us beyond our limits of tolerance into open warfare. Maybe that is what it will take to force Veterans to understand that we have far more in common with each other than we do with the career politicians and the unhinged fringes of America that are destroying our nation.