John Wayne’s World

John Wayne once said “If there are 12 men in a room and you give each of them a dollar, when you come back in 10 years one man will have most of those 12 dollars.”

That is true no matter what sign you hang on the door of that room. Socialism, Communism, Marxism, or Capitalism. There will always be an elite few in any system that ends up with the majority of the resources.

The trick is to develop a system that uses the natural human sense of greed to benefit all members of society and not just an elite few. And if you think you are above the greed that all humans share then you might want to keep reading.

Only one of the above economical models uses human greed to an advantage for all citizens. That’s capitalism. Those who get rich in capitalisms can only stay rich or get richer by allowing those below them enough money to buy their goods. Capitalisms insures that a middle class will exist.

Those who get rich by socialism, Marxism, or communism do not need the people below them to have money. In fact the elites in such systems actually require the people beneath them to remain poor in order for themselves to stay rich. There is simply no middle class. Resources are owned by the elites, and they have no competition which means that they can demand anything of their i9mpoverished people for basic necessities like food and water.

In such a nation of 90% impoverished people, like Venezuela, where people must develop black markets and learn to lie and break laws merely to stay alive, what are their chances of getting their government to organize some plan to combat greenhouse gasses or global warming? How interested will these starving people be in saving the whales or other animals in jeopardy of extinction? If they spend most of their day scrounging around dumps and trash pits to find bits of wood to heat their one-room homes during the winter, how much concern will they have for state-run police agencies that go rogue and kill political opponents? Do you think they will organize a protest against their government while their children go hungry at night? Do you think they will even return home alive after attending any such protests? Do you really think they will be allowed to protest their socialist/communist government?

When the Covid virus took hold in the U.S. consumers went out on a mad rush to purchase toilet paper. For those of you reading this 100 years from now, yes, I said we had a mad run on toilet paper. Stores had trouble keeping it stocked and people were stockpiling several months supplies of it.

At the time of this writing the majority of people in socialist run Venezuela have not seen toilet paper in years. It was gone form their commodities long before Covid was released. In other mostly socialist nations around the world finding toilet paper in a public restroom is extremely rare because the citizenry steals it as soon as it gets stocked. These governments think the answer is to develop mechanical ways to prevent the theft of toilet paper from public restrooms. The rest of us know that is not the answer. The answer is for these socialist nations to simply adopt a quasi-capatalism system like China has. It has made them the most powerful nation sustaining the largest population in the world.

For anyone who believes that ushering in socialism will somehow give you some advantage over others – unless you are at the top of the political food chain, my friend, you have been fooled by them. You will be soon forgotten once they get power.

The only reason we see these protests and riots currently destroying our inner cities is that we already live in the free-est nation that ever existed. We have full authority to voice our opinion on any topic at any time any where. We can go protest the police or global warming any time and be assured that afterwards we can come home safely to our comfortable air-conditioned or heated home and enjoy things like Hamburger helper that at least 50% of the rest of the world’s population can only envy. We can enjoy our daily heated shower and indoor plumbing which flushes the waste of our lives completely away, including the toilet paper that we wipe our butts with. We can get in our affordable automobile and drive anywhere we want to – literally anywhere in the world because U.S. citizens are welcome around the globe. You can create a commodity or sell a commodity or work in a factory with a 401k that insures your retirement. The average American goes from cradle to grave without being hungry or homeless for a single day of his or her life. And during that life he receives the best medical treatment that has ever been available in the history of the world. That’s because some capitalist invented the x-ray, the cat-scan, the other scan I can’t even remember the name of right now, even penicillin was created by a capatalist and it has saved my own life at least once. This new vaccine coming for Covid was created by a capatalist system in record breaking time of any vaccine ever.

So, tell me honestly, what exactly is socialism supposed to fix? Rogue racist cops? We already have laws against rogue racist cops. We all want them put into prison. There is no argument there. Antifa, the terrorists who want to beat us and force us into submission? That’s pretty much the definition of fascism.

If you think socialism is the answer to all of your ailments then please move to a socialist country. Because as our president, President Trump has said, and millions of us agree, “This country will never become socialist.”

Climate Change Reincarnation

Waiting for the clouds to wane-
the fog lifts ever so slowly.
From birth to death and then again-
our stations always so lowly.

Tho’ even we kings with all our might and power,
blessed with things like toilets and showers,
and little pots of mums that die slowly in the fall.
We see the message, the epitaph, written on the wall.

Fatten ourselves with milk and honey ’til life is done,
ignoring others who suffered and perished with none.
Is that why He sent His only Son?
So we can see what we’ve become?

Quietly the geese said goodbye to me today,
much earlier than I thought they may.
Perhaps it is their own little cognizant way
to say perhaps, or perhaps to say,
“We’re getting to hell out because you people have gone nuts.”

Is it more important to “save the planet” or to love one another?
Christ only mentioned one. But can we do both?

Cain and Abel – Relevant?

Is the story of Cain and Abel relevant to today’s society? It’s not cool to kill your brother. I mean WAY not cool. But do we need religion to learn that? If we had no religion at all – would we all be chaotically killing our siblings with out any moral compass what so ever? As though only learning these tales in the Bible can stop us all from becoming atheistic murderous hedonistic plebes?

I love my brother. He’s dead now. But I still love him. (And no. I didn’t kill him.) There is no amount of imagination in this world that would ever bring me to believe it would have been OK to kill my brother. Nor even to harm him. And I couldn’t imagine ever hurting one of my sisters either. Especially not for something like petty jealousy. If I could have ever been so enraged by jealousy that I would want to kill my siblings then all of them would be dead already. Because all of them are much better souls and more successful at life than I am. That doesn’t make me jealous though. It makes me happy to know how wonderful they are and that I was able to share this world with them. They love me. And I love them. The only drawback is that I feel a bit worried about my own relationship with God and ability to drudge on through life in His good blessing. But my brother and sisters aren’t the cause of that worry. Instead they are my bedrock, my inspiration to do better.

The story of Cain killing Abel is irrelevant. In fact it could become a stumbling block to our own faith. Because it makes us indifferent to Cain as a child of God. At the end of that story the hero is obviously Abel, whom God loved and revered so intensely more than the love He held for Cain. So most of us come to love Abel. If we had lived during his time and worked in the fields beside him, helping to tend his sheep, singing with him during happy moments, aching with him during the hard parts, and crying with him during the sad – we would have come to hate Cain for killing Abel. We already do kind of hate Cain for what he did just by knowing the story. So in a way – that story is kind of like gossip. Gossip is sinful because gossip causes hatred. And hatred can grow into murdering your brother if the smoke from your burnt sacrifice doesn’t rise to Heaven.

How many of us sent a sort of silent little prayer to God for Abel when we first discovered the story? Or at least experienced a little twinge of sympathetic emotion for Abel – which is still a little prayer. I think most of us don’t realize it. But that little twinge of emotion IS communication with the Spirit, and communication with the Spirit is definitely communication with God.

Religion teaches us to compartmentalize prayer into something in it’s own sort of benevolent category. We are taught that God is the Omnipotent Supreme Being whom we must adore and obey or suffer His wrath. We are taught that our prayer must be a complete reverent transcending anomaly above the flesh we live in and our prayer must be just this way or just that way in order to be respectful to God. And that prayer is on the highest order of solemnity. BS. We as humans build respect naturally for those who love us. God is not some cold entity who demands things of us and forces us by threat of might to love Him. He loves us. And we communicate with Him everyday whether we know it or not and whether we believe it or not. Because we love him.

Jesus didn’t tell us to “respect” God. He told us to love God. Like God loves us. And He told us to love one another, as God loves others too.

So how many of you have sent a little prayer to God for Cain’s salvation? Doesn’t Cain need our support a little bit more than the favored Abel? What about Judas of Iscariot? Have you asked God to forgive Judas? Is it ok to hate Judas – and hope that he rots in hell? Or did Jesus Christ Himself ask us to love Judas? And to love Cain? And to in fact did not Christ command us to love even the least of our brothers?

Jesus said of the sheep, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me”. The goats, the unbelievers failed to do the very same. (Mt 25:35-36)

“I killed my brother Abel because I fell into hatred and jealousy. Because hatred and jealousy are sins. I sinned. Did you forgive me? Did you pray for me? Did you ask our Father to forgive me? Did you intercede for me? Did you visit me in purgatory? Are you a Samaritan who looked kindly upon my sprawled and broken carcass and who offered me water?

Ours is not to judge. Ours is to love. Sometimes quietly. Because those who sin can resent charitable acts borne of love. and our love can become a stumbling block to them. Please pray for these rioters and looters and arsonists and murderers. As Jesus Christ so nobly recognized many years ago – “Forgive them Father. For they do not know what they are doing.“

Forgotten Moments

Tender things soothe us.
Like a kitten’s purr in fall –
Just a moment’s paw(se).

Tombstone Haiku

We are just tombstones,
melting away in the rain.
Soon to be nothing.

My Garden Now

Green beans sprouting in their own time.
Artichokes are still hiding ‘neath the soil.
Radishes perky green and pinky tops glowing.
Dandelions keep attacking the lettuce – Lettuce pray!
Eggplant’s long and waxy shiny tubes in the Sun.
Now that’s why this garden was begun!

Created for the wonderful group at D’verse Poets…. Victoria Slotto’s challenge of writing a quadrille – 44 words incorporating any variety of the word Garden… Extra Surprise – this one is an acrostic! too!

Flatter Yourself

It’s hard not to notice.

That you think of we as us.

And it boggles me because

I work hard at keeping you as nothing.

It’s not about you, Miss center of the universe.

You babbling attention grabbing center of this verse.

Oh me, oh my, he’s written something again,

And I’m sure it’s about me and my witchy hairy chin.

So listen to me and my crazy rant, so you will protect me from his irrelevance.

Watch him and hound him for my every chance,

To crucify and pierce him with my petty little lance.

For once long ago he showed me his soul. And so I must destroy him. It’s my one and only goal.

It might help you to know, you deluded squak,

That except for now I’ve never written or talked

About you.

Stop flattering yourself.

Death’s End

Tickling Death chases dawn,
smeared lipstick down her chin.
Torn knee pantyhose,
a stumbling fall,
one eyelash half unglued.

And yet comes life,
a starlight gaze, breaking Sun.

Moreso that, the lackluster gaze,
of Tickliing Death’s shadow, fading away into the cobblestones,
hiding for another day.

Until dusk again, old girl.
Better luck for you is only some day away.
That day, that holy day…
That day I’ll acquiesce,
and not kick your puny ass.
For that day God will rise,
and call me to a greater cause.
So that day you may have your way.
you cunt whore, your world, your life of pain and despair.
You will part your lips and swallow me whole,
leave me under your vanity skin so shallow.
Like a seed to grow and destroy you.

And I will be your last –
for after you will be sent to reign over the only dead.

 

 

Dark December Day

Never a darker December has been than this grey, grey, grey day. An emotionless sky melts into the farthest reach of emotionless earth, not even a seam to remark of. Everywhere the absence of light. And life. An occasional silhouette of leaf-less tree skeleton strains to be viewed in the wash of a distant neighbor’s Christmas light display. Sometimes a twinkle. Reminiscent, faintly, of stars i think that once were here. But maybe that was a dream. So many years. So many fallen stars. And now this. A grey so thick and invasive that its tendrils sweep into my soul and drag me into its clutches, the grey earth and sky. No longer a player of life. No longer accounted among the strident. Just a minor ash in the great torrent of liquid grey which is now everything and nothing at once, raging to where the unknown and always avoided has been. And i let it take me where it will. I submit with prayers to God. For the earth is indeed this grey river of nothingness. And it belongs to Satan the Petty, the seeker of all that he is not and can never be. For he is hatred, and nothingness, and calls us “Deplorable” because we see his sinister plan to steal souls. As he told Eve at the Tree of Knowledge, so he tells the young abandoned women of our age that their ability to kill their own child is of their own power and not of the free will God imposed upon each and every one of us. They trick others into believing that lustful sex acts are natural and those who say otherwise are the true deplorables and haters. Rather than this plea being seen as a beacon to my brothers and sisters in this world to help them avoid the trickery of Satan, it will be held up by Satan and called hatred in many forms, accusing my words of being deplorable. “And you will be tortured and cast down in my name. But persevere and the tribulation will be shortened for your sake.” I don’t think there’s any question. The devil is winning this world. This impeachment circus is an obvious sign that chaos is replacing wisdom in this atmosphere of complete and utter delusion. And we stand helpless in this grey world without recourse. Save the hope of Michael swooping down from Heaven to smite them with his mighty sword i can see no other return to sanity before these imps destroy the world with their unabashed and unashamed hatred of all things Godly. And all this amidst their delusional and complete ignorance of that fact. Their minds tell them they are righteous, so much that they can sin and lie and cheat and steal to achieve their develish goals. Because they hail themselves as the purveyers of all that is good. But as Matthew wrote in chapter 25, they will be surprised on judgement day. And so will we all. Which means i will be going to hell with them. You can join this grey torentious waterfall to hell with me or you can save yourself. Go clean, feed, clothe, and shelter a homeless person today. Visit a repentant lonely soul in hospice or prison today. Search for the hungry, the meek and the mild to soothe them with sustenance or companionship. These are the actions God asks of us. Not to pretend we are superior to our political rivals. That is nothing. NOTHING but stumbling blocks for Gods other children. And woe to we who prevent His children from reaching Him. Everyone of us is created in the image of God. All are worthy of love. Those who pick and choose are not true saints of God. Beware of their message and know it is cloaked in chaos and senselessness.

Liquidity of Air

Air is not nothing.  Since we can see through air and are mostly desensitized to the weight of its mass constantly pushing down on us and surrounding us, we can easily be lulled into the misperception that air is empty – comprised of nothing.  But that’s not true.  In fact a cup of air has more atoms than a cup of water.    When we pour water into an empty cup it’s not actually empty.  It’s filled with air atoms that are then displaced by the heavier water.   Water flows in, air gets pushed out.

Air atoms are what make airplane flight possible, by the way.  The air atoms traveling over the top of a curved wing move much faster than the air atoms traveling under the near flat wing.  This causes a decrease in pressure on top of the wing allowing for lift.  Here’s a tip for you aeronautical engineers out there: if you can find a way to slow down the air under the wing then the lift will become greater and easier.  Just saying.  Why do the “next step” processes in scientific advancement sometimes take decades or centuries?  It’s like we are all having collective brain farts.  It only stands to reason that if the faster air on top of the wing increases lift then slowing or compressing the air underneath the wing would increase lift also.  But I digress.

Air atoms are striated in our atmosphere too, like aged bourbon in an oak barrel.  If you open a bourbon barrel after 12 or 15 years you will see that the lighter materials – especially dangerous and very light alcohols like methanol – have settled toward the top.  And the heavier materials like darker bourbon and particulate matter settle toward the bottom.

Air does the same thing.  Lighter atoms settle toward the top of the atmosphere and heavier atoms settle toward the ground.  So air is striated by weight.

The big question, at least in my mind, is why do things striate by their “heaviness?”  Scientists and laymen like myself have argued this question ad infinitum, or until the cows come home.  The bottom line is simple though: we all agree that there is something pulling on atmospheric atoms from earth in order to keep them in our atmosphere.  Some sort of force is keeping the water in our lake beds and ocean beds.

Of course, duh,  every sixth grader knows that the force holding things onto the planet is gravity.  The problem is that gravity is – as of yet – unexplained.  We enjoy a simplified understanding of what gravity does.  We just don’t know how it does it.  Which is OK for now.

Again, it’s not entirely true that the Earth’s gravity holds atoms in place.  We know for example that thousands of metric tons of hydrogen atoms escape from the Earths atmosphere every year and float off to some other gravitational pull.  My guess is towards the Sun or Jupiter, the two largest bodies of mass in our solar system.

It doesn’t matter though because it will be replaced eventually.  What’s important is why hydrogen floats off.  And that’s pretty easy too.  Hydrogen is the lightest element at 1.007 atomic weight units.  So naturally in a gravity situation it gets “displaced” to the top of the atmosphere.  Helium is another story.  At 4.002 atomic weight it will be less likely replaced because of it’s weight, among other things.  Among them is the fact that helium does not react with other molecules to form molecules, and therefore will not get “weighted down.”  The only reason we have helium is that it is trapped under geologic formations.    Once released it will float off into space like it’s lighter hydrogen counterparts.

Why can we see water?  Because we would drown if we couldn’t see the difference between air and water.  It’s a survival thing.

I try to get around making mistakes on environmental math by thinking of air as a liquid, – lite style.  And there are different layers of air too, depending on how high it is.  For instance, oxygen is hard to find above certain altitudes.  So the “oxygenated layer” is pretty much constrained to being down here with us Earth walkers.  Above that is another, lighter layer. And above that is another, lighter layer.  etc., etc…..  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that turbulence is just the jagged waves on top of one layer where it meets the next, upper light layer.  “Waves?  I don’t see no stinkin’ waves!”  Well, that’s pretty much my point.  We can’t see them.

So why are layers separated by their lightness, or weight?  Well, most people explain that with the word gravity.  The problem there is that gravity, in fact, is only a word.  It’s not a definition.