Halloween Has Gone To Hell

Welcome friends!

Well, it looks as though the latest political and economic crisis engineered by the bright lights of the Republican Party has finally abated so we can all breathe a sigh of relief over that.  Thankfully, President Obama and the Democrats in the Senate did not buckle under the Republican threat to bring the American economy to its knees unless we met their demands and rolled back laws previously enacted by Congress and signed by the President or engaged in other dangerous anti-democratic outrages and tomfoolery.  What a spectacle, right?  But I suppose it’s what the people who vote Republican time and time again demand.  No sense blaming the messengers.  The fact of the matter as I’ve pointed out in many previous posts is that a large swath of the American public appears to have no real understanding or appreciation of our democratic political system and seems to be interested in democracy only to the extent that it gets them what they want when they want it.  According to these people, mostly conservatives these days although that certainly wasn’t always the case, if you don’t get satisfaction through normal democratic procedures then you’re perfectly justified using any means available to get what you want, including such harmful and short-sighted stratagems as shutting down the government, wrecking the economy, and basically just trashing the place.  The sad news is that we’re apparently destined for another round of Banana Republican political shenanigans, posturing, and destabilizing brinksmanship this January and February.  Oh well, no sense wallowing in depression and fear.  Life goes on.  No, I think for this post I’d like to set aside all my various political and economic concerns for a little while and instead continue with my periodical critical commentary on some popular holidays.  This time out I’d like to take up a distinctively American holiday that seems to me to have deteriorated significantly during my lifetime: Halloween... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Jesus Loves You

Welcome friends!

I’ll bet you thought I was going to talk about the Republican Party and the latest economic crisis they’ve managed to concoct, which if history is any guide I suppose will start to create havoc with the stock market any time now.  (I was just checking my records and I see the last time the Republicans used the threat of a debt default to terrorize people into doing their bidding in August 2011 the stock market crashed eleven percent.  Ouch!  Do they know I’d like to retire some day?  And I don’t even know the ripple effects on the economy at large but I’d bet they were also substantial.)  What a bunch of scoundrels.  Just every bad stereotype of an old time politician rolled into one.  You know, they don’t like a law passed by Congress and signed by the President so what’s their response?  Hey, we can screw up the budget process and take down the economy!  Take back that law or we’ll mess you up America, we’ll mess you up real bad!  Did you know our Constitution even allowed weird minority groups in Congress to sabotage the government and economy to get their way?  I didn’t.  I guess we just never had any elected officials with sufficient contempt for the institutions and people of the US to resort to these sorts of political machinations before, but I guess we do now.  You know, our system has worked pretty well in general over the past couple of hundred years but the Republican Party has apparently put their heads together and managed to come up with a way to screw it up.  Sorry for venting but it’s just frustrating as all hell to me that we have to allow this unscrupulous pack of over privileged ingrates continually threaten our livelihoods, investments, and retirements this way, but what choice do we have?  Advise the President and Congress to roll over and enter into hostage negotiations with them?  Throw democracy out the window?  I wouldn’t recommend it; I really wouldn’t.  Might patch things up in the short run but it’s no solution for the long run.  No, to put things in a nutshell for the common man and woman: we’re screwed.  Well, anyway, I hope the President’s legal team and the Justice Department and the Supreme Court and whoever else might have a say are taking a hard and sober look at what’s going on right now because at some point I think something will have to change.  We just can’t afford to allow the Republican Party to force us all to lurch from political crisis to political crises like some banana republic forever teetering on the brink of economic chaos and ruin.  But no, I’m not going to write about that.  You can find all the commentary and analysis you like in any newspaper.  Knock yourself out.  Instead I thought I’d just wrap up my little religion kick I’ve been on recently with one additional thought on spiritual matters that crossed my mind the other day.

So I was attending a village church fair recently... no, really ... I was visiting some people and we ended up at the local church fair.  Hey, life happens you know.  Anyway, as I was saying, I was attending a village church fair the other day and the priest or pastor or whoever it was got on the public address system to give his little sermon and I have to say it really caught my attention.  It wasn’t so much any particular thing he said as much as the whole tenor of his little monologue, which involved repeated references to Jesus wanting to have a “long term committed personal relationship” with people... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!