(06-16-2023 06:32 AM)BartlettTigerFan Wrote: All the debauchery going on in our country, all the festering evil, much of it aimed at children, all the misery and suffering and mental illness, and yet most of what you see on TV or online is Trump Trump Trump. He’s like some dime store Jesus that a huge part of the population has given their soul to. Or a dime store Satan for many, like you.
So many people spending huge chunks of their lives thinking about and debating about and arguing about and obsessing about Donald J Trump, while I frankly don’t think he makes a difference either way at this point. The evil that pervades this country, hell the entire world it seems, that appears to hold all of us in its grasp, is far greater than him. He’s just another distraction for all us little people.
It’s basically how magic tricks work. “Hey look over there”.
I might suggest a read or reread of Thomas Mann's "Mario and the Magician". Distraction and the cult of personality are strong in this nation because of our failure to believe in two things. (1) A power greater than ourselves: God to whom we are all answerable, or ideals which are bigger than self. It holds us all to standards greater than self and profit. (2) Belief in ourselves, our own capacity to think, our own desire to see what is good, and to do what is necessary to defeat evil and promote good.
If you don't believe in a higher power, a life to come, you will cower in fear before the powerful and live in bondage under their power and control. If you don't believe in yourself that bondage will never be overthrown.
Just because some people have the clout and power of money to make their will and world view dominant, it doesn't make them right. And when the dominant get their way, unchecked by what is good for all, destruction has always followed.
We are oppressed. We are oppressed by Godless corruption, which is always the rule when love of self is amplified by will and power in the form of fatal narcissism. Raise a generation or two who hates correction, can't admit they are wrong, and punish all who try to teach them, and destruction (hell) is what follows.
We are there, and up to our chins in the narcissistic manure of these demonic lovers of self.
As the cartoon once astutely observed (Pogo), "We have met the enemy and he is us!"
If we straightened ourselves out and worked together, we would still be greater than Russia and China. As long as we are at each other's throats, as long as we assume that because you are wealthy you are right, and as long as we are more concerned with profits than what is just, we are accomplishing little more than a national suicide!
Reform ourselves and regain the focus of doing what is in the best interest of the whole nation rather than what is good for the corporation which lines our pockets, and we can survive and thrive.
If we don't we will all be dead within a few decades.