Long and the short of it

This could be a long post, but given my track record, I don't tend to make long posts.  However, I am in the communication "business" as a blogger, so I will have to communicate some complex ideas, and this will require a lot of thoughts to be organized into a coherent whole.  As I was mentioning, given my track record, I'm not the one to write long, complex pieces.   Nearly all of my posts are under 500 words, and the majority are a lot shorter than that.

TO BE ORGANIZED MEANS SOMETHING

If you are a Rush Limbaugh fan, you remember that he likes to say that words mean things.  I too believe that words mean things.  In order to be organized then means getting organized--- literally.

This blog started off as a real jumbled mess, and I got it somewhat organized.  However, most people won't see all that, and may want it all distilled down to just one essay that they can read in less than 10 minutes.  That's because people are busy.  They read this blog once, and it doesn't make sense to them, then they give up on it.

Limbaugh also liked to say that if you want to understand his radio program, you have to listen to it for awhile.  He said about two weeks.  Now, like  Limbaugh, in order to understand this blog, you have to stay with me.  You can't just read it for a day and be up to speed.  You have to read it regularly, or it won't make much sense, then you will give up on it and leave.

So, the long and the short of this introduction is this:  if you want to understand this blog, you have to stay with me.  Or read this post, and hopefully this post will get you started into understanding why it may pay you to start reading it, and staying with me.  Otherwise, you won't think it will make any sense, and being busy, you will think it is a big waste of time, and you will do something else with your time.


WHY I STARTED THIS BLOG

As I mentioned in the intro, I'm not into long posts.  I wrote the intro just now, and then thought it over, and then proofread it.  I found some errors and thought of something else.  People will focus in on the errors and then disregard the rest.  I don't take that into account as often as I should, and will often fail to proofread my posts.  It may be littered with errors, which will cause some people to disregard it because they are focused in on disputing what I have to say.  Having something that isn't perfect is a way to dispute it and to  discredit it.  I will try to avoid that sin going forward, but being the way I am, I may slip up from time to time.

This allows me to get into why I started this blog.  The above is an example.  People pay attention to irrelevant things.  The thought is what should matter, not the way it is presented.  Unfortunately, too many people will focus on how it is presented, and then use that as a excuse to discredit it.

As I also mentioned above in the intro, my posts are short.  The blog is somewhat disorganized, but it is a lot better than it was in the beginning.  You can find out plenty by just taking a minute and looking it over and see what I am referring to with my ideas.  Unless you are willing to take the time the do that, it won't make sense and you will leave and not come back.

Why did I start this blog?  Because something was wrong.  That's how it started.  I had a good four or five years during the Bush Administration, but then it all fell apart.  Since then has been the lean years and these past seven years or so has all but wiped out everything that I was able to save during the fat Bush years.  That's a Biblical reference for those of you who are so inclined.  I won't mention where in the Bible, but it is there.

So I started off thinking that it was just the economy, stupid.  Fix up a new industry that will grow the economy the way the internet did, and we can enjoy another round of fat years.  But it turned out to be not so simple as all that.

IF ONLY IT WERE SO SIMPLE

It is not so simple because it is a spiritual problem, not a material problem.  That is a kind of revelation to me that may have just occurred this very morning as I am writing this.  Our problems aren't material.  We have a spiritual problem.

It is like Jesus of Nazareth said:  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven.

For a man cannot serve two masters.  He cannot serve the god of money and God at the same time.  He will hate one and cling to the other.  If he serves the interests of money, he cannot overcome the spiritual side of his problems.  In a larger sense, the material side of our problem is the problem itself.  Too many people are so enamored of money that will do anything for it.  When a man goes that far, he neglects the spiritual, and then he has a big time spiritual problem.  That's where I believe we are as a nation and as a civilization.  We have gone too far down the road of materialism.   We have to rediscover our spiritual roots or we are finished.

I think that is the revelation that I had.  But it may be read as just the ramblings of a dying old man.

AM I DYING?

I don't know.  I may have twenty years left or twenty days, or just twenty hours.  I am at that time of life that just about anything can kill me, and just might.

When you are at that stage, and no matter who you are, you will be eventually, it has a tendency to concentrate your mind.

Maybe that explains the revelation.   Or maybe I'm just an old nut.

But then again, I've been on this trail for over five years.  It isn't like I began this yesterday because the doctor said I had six months to live.  If I didn't pay the bill... He'd give me six more.   Yuck, yuck.  I began this quest in search of what the problem was.  That's what I think I have found.  You can disagree if you wish.  I know I come from a family who can argue about anything and usually do.  Yeah, and making jokes about it can keep the Grim Reaper at bay for awhile longer.  If I didn't learn that lesson awhile back, he'd have already collected my rotten ass.  Making jokes about myself, like saying my ass is rotten is no mere trick.  Or maybe it is.  The trick is that you have to  be able to laugh at yourself and not take yourself too seriously.  That's the lesson I had to learn the hard way.

By the way, that's another thing that is wrong.  People take themselves much too seriously. 

I'm not dead yet, so you "snowflake" types aren't safe yet.  Yuck, yuck.

All joking aside, this spiritual thing is serious business.  Spiritual means what happens when you die, as we are all going to die eventually.   Too many people today act or seem to act as if they will live forever.  But they won't.  Not unless the Fountain of Youth is found.  I'm sure you are wishing for it to be found, but it hasn't been found yet.  It may never be found.  In the meantime, you have this thing called a body which won't last forever.  But, you may say that you do not believe that there is a spirit, so it doesn't matter.  Death means nothing to you, it is merely the end of existence.  To the contrary, I do believe in a spirit, so it matters to me.  The spirit is eternal.  I didn't have to learn that one the hard way.  But what that means may mean that I will in another way.  I'd rather not have that happen at the Pearly Gates.   My infirmities of late have gotten my attention.  It's no longer a joke.

I'm trying to warn you that it isn't a joke for you either.  Or anyone else for that matter.  This is the most serious business there is.  But in a larger sense, not only can you die, so can everything else that you care about that remains when you are gone.  Like the country, for example.

IF YOU DON"T BELIEVE IN GOD, THAT IS FINE

I'm not going to deliver a Bible thumping sermon.  I'm not all that religious, you know.  Which worries me a bit now that the Grim Reaper is in sight.

But keep in mind who you are following and what motivates them.  If our leaders are materialistic, and they sure as heck are as you are reading this, then they will do only what is good for themselves.  What they do for you will be incidental to their own interests.  For a man cannot serve two masters.  He must serve God, or he must serve at the foot of evil one, who lusts for power and MONEY.  The evil one does not go to the cross for your sake.  He will feed upon your sorrows and misery.

No, if you don't believe in any of that, then you can follow what I think about the materialistic side from the earlier posts.  But we, as a nation, didn't follow those paths, which would have been good for us, as a nation, but would not have been good for those who we have been following.

Example:  NIXON.

In the early seventies, when the Energy Crisis hit, Nixon cancelled the molten-salt reactor project.  Why is that important?  Because if we had this commercialized, which came from the genius of our own civilization, and had been PROVEN in the lab, we would not have become dependent upon MIDEAST OIL.  Now tell me:  What is our big problem today?  ISIS anyone?  What bred ISIS and is funding it this very day?  OIL MONEY.   Well, NIXON put us on this path.  We got married to the petrodollar in order save Nixon's political ass.  We are paying for that mistake now with ISIS.

Make no mistake, there are many other examples.  The thing that is really bad is that Nixon was once an exception.  What's true today is becoming the RULE.  They are all that way now.  Those in charge of our well being care only for their own good.  NOT OURS.  They are on the materialistic path to power and money that rests upon your misery.

Good guys, bad guys?  I think just about all of them today are BAD.  You have to look long and hard to find much good in any of them today.  But you people probably will want to argue that point.

I'm supporting Trump not because he is GOOD, but because he has GUTS.  The so-called conservatives haven't got any and have defaulted on their obligation to serve us because they serve themselves.   Trump may not be any better, but he does have one spiritual value which is COURAGE.  I believe that he will support the nation.   The rest of these jokers won't.

By the way, I had to get political because this essay is getting too long.  Make no mistake.  Everything I wrote here can be backed up.  All you have to do is to read this blog.   I find evidence of all this that I have written about all the time on the web.  I do not write this because I am blindly following Trump's rhetoric.  Heck, I hardly even listen to him.   I don't need to.  I know what he is fighting.  He is fighting the very thing that is killing us.

And you.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

No, this isn't a political piece.  I intend for it to be a philosophical and spiritual piece.  It was written maybe as a last gasp at something that I have searching for the last five and half years.  I want to put up something just in case I don't finish with the thoughts.   There is plenty more where this came from.  I could write a doggone book about this, let me tell you.

DON"T WORRY ABOUT ME

Take care of yourselves.  I will do my part.   See ya round.  I hope.

continued on part 2