Extreme nausea announced itself around 9:00 PM Saturday. Granted, it’s not the visitor you want knocking at your door, but arrive it did. “Hey, there. Mind if I come to visit? I’m just gonna find a comfy spot in your brain and batter you for the next 9 hours and make your life a living hell. What ya’ say?” Beneath the sometimes wickedly sarcastic humor and laughter of this blog lay this writer’s mental awareness of the darkness and horror of dying. This past weekend reiterated that I fear the process more than the destination.
Archive for August, 2022
A friend and I overhead another table repeating a false narrative that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is hiring hires 87,000 new ‘armed’ IRS agents. The keyword (i.e., ‘hook’) is ‘armed.’ The claim is false. Whether the folks repeating was knowledgeable or not, they weren’t alone. Social media folks and news personalities (i.e., FOX News and others) also repeated the falsehood. Even 88-year-old Republican Senator Chuck Grassley repeated. What they are saying is, “Watch out everyone. The IRS Bogeymen are coming.”
Some are criticized for lack of forthright principles or are looked upon with scornful eyes as we compromise some political position. However, many engage in the fine art of conciliating, balancing, and interpreting facets of opinion. We mentally thread the needle, balance the justification, and mold the means to justify the ends. I did it. I’m sure many do it today. And damn, we are not profiles of courage.
During the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Florida, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene argued that Christian Nationalism is a good thing. “That’s (Christian Nationalism) not a bad word. That’s a good thing. There’s nothing wrong with leading with your faith. If we do not live our lives and vote like nationalists—caring about our country, putting our country first, and wanting that to be the focus of our federal government—if we do not lead that way, then we will not be able to fix it.” Christian Nationalism is a political ideology and cultural framework that merges Christian and American identities. Unfortunately, the ideology distorts both Christian faith and America’s promise of religious freedom.