Metaphors for Meghan McCain (et al.) ?!!

#2: On September 3, 2018, the strangest, accidental(?) juxtaposition occurred on CBC's As It Happens: 'twas a news story about a fish-monger and faux fish eyes that preceded by mere seconds a news story about John McCain.¹

#1: On September 1, 2018, the same day that Meghan McCain was eulogizing her father² at the Washington National Cathedral,³ and singing the praises of a forever great "America," the Kuwaiti fish-monger's business was shut down because of the cover-up and fraud.⁴

Is there a global metaphor here for all the blinded Meghans of the US? those so possessed by myth that they cannot (will not) see what has been done to moral and constitutional values by those pursuing and protecting power and gain (including her father)?

So what can one say to Meghan McCain? the same thing that was said to her step-mother, Cindy, one decade ago? Oh, déjà vu!

http://dejavu-times.blogspot.com/2008/06/memo-to-cindy-mccain-et-al.html

Will we ever open our eyes? or do we prefer the googly eyes of myth and pretense (and fish stories)? How oft, how long must we see the slippage and still deny the frauds and corruptions that are before our very eyes??

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1. CBC ~ As It Happens: https://podcast-a.akamaihd.net/mp3/podcasts/asithappens-yQTZPxHG-20180903.mp3 (fish-eye story begins at minute 24:55 followed at minute 27:15 by the John McCain story).
2. John McCain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain
3. https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/09/01/meghan-mccain-john-mccain-funeral-speech-full-vpx.cnn
4. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6125847/Kuwaiti-store-closed-staff-stuck-googly-eyes-fish-make-look-fresh.html

A Set of Simpletons?

(A voice* to US from the Athenian dust?!)

Solon: “If ye have suffered the melancholy consequences of your own incompetence, do not attribute this evil fortune to the gods. Ye have yourselves raised^[1] these men^[2] to power over you, and have reduced yourselves by this course to a wretched state of servitude. Each man among you, individually, walketh with the tread of a fox, but collectively ye are a set of simpletons.^[3] For ye look to the tongue and the play of a man's speech and regard not the deed which is done before your eyes.”⁴

How long will the “tongue and play” of the powerful make us blind to the things they actually do?—blind and deaf to the witnesses and whistle-blowers they mock, suppress, and target for destruction?⁵

Solon: “Out of the cloud come snow and hail in their fury, and the thunderbolt springeth from the lightning's flash : so from great men ruin issueth upon the state, and the people through their own folly sink into slavery under a single lord. Having raised a man to too high a place, it is not easy later to hold him back : now is the time to be observant of all things."⁶

How many déjà vus must we endure?

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* Solon of Athens (c. 638–c. 558 BC): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon
1. [or allowed them to be raised by malevolent forces through stupor, apathy, fear, deception, distraction, complicity, and so forth]
2. [and women, being Presidents, or HoR members, or senators——right or left it mattereth not!]
3. [because we have learned next to NOTHING from the history of man, the nature of power and gain, and the ubiquity of secret conspiracies??]
4. THE FRAGMENTS OF SOLON'S POEMS XIII-XIV ~ https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011212503, (p. 145, bold emphasis added)
5. http://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.ca/2017/02/disrupt-and-destroy.html
6. Fragments of Solon's Poems, p. 145; actual page at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?view=image;size=100;id=loc.ark%3A%2F13960%2Ft0gt6fp8w;q1=towns-folk;page=root;seq=159;num=145

A Coming American Déjà Vu?

Circa 87 BC, a chief judge, governor, and prophet named Alma, lived and recorded his observations of a political event that occurred somewhere in the present-day Americas. These were his observations:¹

Chapter 2
1 And it came to pass in the commencement of the fifth year of [the reign of the judges] there began to be a contention among the people; for a certain man, being called Amlici, [arose] being a very cunning man, yea, a wise man as to the wisdom of the world, ... —
2 Now this Amlici had, by his cunning, drawn away much people after him; even so much that they began to be very powerful; and they began to endeavor to establish Amlici to be a king over the people.
3 Now this was alarming to the people of the church, and also to all those who had not been drawn away after the persuasions of Amlici; for they knew that according to their law that such things must be established by the voice of the people.
4 Therefore, if it were possible that Amlici should gain the voice of the people, he, being a wicked man, would deprive them of their rights and privileges of the church; for it was his intent to destroy the church of God.
5 And it came to pass that the people assembled themselves together throughout all the land, every man according to his mind, whether it were for or against Amlici, in separate bodies, having much dispute and wonderful contentions one with another.
6 And thus they did assemble themselves together to cast in their voices concerning the matter; and they were laid before the judges.
7 And it came to pass that the voice of the people came against Amlici, that he was not made king over the people.
8 Now this did cause much joy in the hearts of those who were against him; but Amlici did stir up those who were in his favor to anger against those who were not in his favor.
9 And it came to pass that they gathered themselves together, and did consecrate Amlici to be their king.
10 Now when Amlici was made king over them he commanded them that they should take up arms against their brethren; and this he did that he might subject them to him. ...
12 Therefore the people ... were aware of the intent of the Amlicites, and therefore they did prepare to meet them; yea, they did arm themselves with swords, and with cimeters, and with bows, and with arrows, and with stones, and with slings, and with all manner of weapons of war, of every kind.
13 And thus they were prepared to meet the Amlicites at the time of their coming. And there were appointed captains, and higher captains, and chief captains, according to their numbers.
14 And it came to pass that Amlici did arm his men with all manner of weapons of war of every kind; and he also appointed rulers and leaders over his people, to lead them to war against their brethren.
15 And it came to pass that the Amlicites came upon the hill Amnihu, ... and there they began to make war ...
Chapter 3
1 ... —now the number of the slain were not numbered, because of the greatness of their number— ...
2 Now many women and children had been slain with the sword, and also many of their flocks and their herds; and also many of their fields of grain were destroyed, for they were trodden down by the hosts of men. ...
Chapter 4
1 Now it came to pass in the sixth year of the reign of the judges ... there were no contentions nor wars ...;
2 But the people were afflicted, yea, greatly afflicted for the loss of their brethren, and also for the loss of their flocks and herds, and also for the loss of their fields of grain, which were trodden under foot and destroyed ....
3 And so great were their afflictions that every soul had cause to mourn; and they believed that it was the judgments of God sent upon them because of their wickedness and their abominations; therefore they were awakened to a remembrance of their duty.

In the present political climate, do we see potential “American” parallels? And what about other parallels from history?

Are USians² descending a wrong road and thinking that the fork ahead gives them a right choice?

Do Trumpers really think:

▪ that a corporate tyrant is, at heart, a freedom-loving constitutionalist?
▪ that this so-called “non-establishment,” outsider candidate is really “non-establishment” when his surrogates and advisers are deeply, far-right establishment?
▪ that a fight amongst GOP (& Dem) narcissists makes this “underdog” a good guy? (or is he really just the guy who is so self-absorbed and -deluded that he is his own cabal-of-one, totally unaware that he is being manipulated by a more cunning cabal?)
▪ that the enemy of all good cannot have a forked tongue (R&D)? a two-pronged approach? two candidates? two fronts? two scenarios? multiple options?
▪ that the exposures from WikiLeaks (deception, intimidation, corruption, manipulation, etc., etc.) cancel the flood (deception, intimidation, corruption, manipulation, etc., etc.) from this man's past and present (and juvenile mouth³)?
▪ that WOE is not in the works when seeing, we see not (what DJT does in real RECORDED time and space) and hearing, we hear not (what DJT really says and thinks from a place of self-delusion)?

Perhaps USians have come to this fake R&D choice-point (a PONR?⁴), because previous, genuine choices were botched (sometimes without consciousness) in déjà vu of every other great nation.

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1. See Book of Mormon | Alma, chapter 2-4 for the full text which can be found at https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm?lang=eng.
2. Since “American” has been co-opted by the United States (US) despite the equal rights of all North, Central, and South Americans, the citizens of the United States are herein being called USians in the spirit of equality with Brazilians, Canadians, Chileans, Hondurans, Mexicans, Venezuelans, etc., etc.
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS4Lw2yMmuA
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_no_return

Death by Distraction?

Just like the bread and circuses of old Rome, WE THE PEOPLE of the World are being anesthetized to reality. We congregate around artificial stages of fantasy and fabrication while the real world disintegrates around us. Please take time for a “blast of truth” and WAKE UP.

If We Don't Stop This We're Dead (Time 36:05 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHttfbmFJ_s&list=TLqrNfGZboDJIyODA0MjAxNg

It's past time to become part of the critical mass.

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See also:
▪ Geoengineering Watch Global Alert News, April 23, 2016 ( geoengineeringwatch.org ) (Time 55:07 min.) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EABDHF1q5cM
▪ Geoengineering Watch Global Alert News, April 16, 2016 ( geoengineeringwatch.org ) (Time 54:44 min.) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akPLxCYJdaA

Spellbinding

Once again, leaks, hacks, and unauthorized revelations (i.e., “The Panama Papers”¹) shock / anger /sadden us as if we expected something different. How many times must this déjà vu repeat itself before we truly understand the warning:

And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. (New Testament | Matthew 19:24)

Wealth changes people, so if we are still dreaming about striking it rich, let’s read and listen to these discussions:

● The Rich Are Different: More Money, Less Empathy²

● Studies reveal the super-rich suffer anxiety, lack of empathy due to wealth³ (Time 23:25 min.)

And let us revisit this from a March 18, 2014 Déjà Vu Times post, Truly Afflicted (With Riches)!!⁴

    “Money on the Mind” (8:.55 min.)
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuqGrz-Y_Lc&sns=em

Great wealth also seems to be accompanied by a companion condition called spellbinding. We may know we have wealth (sufficient to conceal it in shell companies) but we may never realize we have contracted the companion condition where money and its power progressively blinds and deafens us to fatal consequences.

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. And now for a man to take up his cross, is to deny himself all ungodliness, and every worldly lust, and keep my commandments. … Therefore forsake the world, and save your souls; for what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (New Testament | Matthew 16: 24, 26 combined with Matthew 16:25-26, 29 JST⁵)

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1. Panama Papers: Document leak exposes global corruption, secrets of the rich http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/panama-leak-offshore-records-putin-messi-money-1.3518951
Panama Papers reveal billions hidden in anonymous paper shares http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/panama-papers-bearer-shares-1.3525434
2. http://healthland.time.com/2010/11/24/the-rich-are-different-more-money-less-empathy/
3. CBC’s The Current with Maria Tremonti (podcast hosted by Laura Lynch Friday, April 8, 2016) at http://www.cbc.ca/radio/popup/audio/listen.html?autoPlay=true&clipIds=&mediaIds=2686455432&contentarea=radio&subsection1=radio1&subsection2=currentaffairs&subsection3=the_current&contenttype=audio&title=2016/04/08/1.3526575-studies-reveal-the-super-rich-suffer-anxiety-lack-of-empathy-due-to-wealth&contentid=1.3526575
Text summary at http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-april-8-2016-1.3526499/studies-reveal-the-super-rich-suffer-anxiety-lack-of-empathy-due-to-wealth-1.3526575
4. http://www.dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/2014/03/truly-afflicted-with-riches.html
5. JST = Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible

Ripening? Again?

An addendum to the recent post of March 16, 2016 titled, “Daze of Yore and Fore”¹:

Considering U.S. political affairs of recent months, here are four warning voices from the dust—from ancient prophets of the “American” continents:

Circa 92 B.C.E
And if the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity, then is the time that the judgments of God will come upon you; yea, then is the time he will visit you with great destruction even as he has hitherto visited this land [of the Americas].²

Circa 30 B.C.E.
For as their laws and their governments were established by the voice of the people, and they who chose evil were more numerous than they who chose good, therefore they were ripening for destruction, for the laws had become corrupted. Yea, and this was not all; they were a stiffnecked people, insomuch that they could not be governed by the law nor justice, save it were to their destruction.³

Circa 384 C.E.
They were once a delightsome people, and they had Christ for their shepherd; yea, they were led even by God the Father. But now, behold, they are led about by Satan, even as chaff is driven before the wind, or as a vessel is tossed about upon the waves, without sail or anchor, or without anything wherewith to steer her; and even as she is, so are they.⁴

Circa 416 C.E. (nigh 1600 years ago)
26 And no one need say [the records of this people in the Americas] shall not come, for they surely shall, for the Lord hath spoken it; for out of the earth shall they come, by the hand of the Lord, and none can stay it; and it shall come in a day when it shall be said that miracles are done away; and it shall come even as if one should speak from the dead.
27 And it shall come in a day when the blood of saints shall cry unto the Lord, because of secret combinations and the works of darkness.
28 Yea, it shall come in a day when the power of God shall be denied, and churches become defiled and be lifted up in the pride of their hearts; yea, even in a day when leaders of churches and teachers shall rise in the pride of their hearts, even to the envying of them who belong to their churches.
29 Yea, it shall come in a day when there shall be heard of fires, and tempests, and vapors of smoke in foreign lands;
30 And there shall also be heard of wars, rumors of wars, and earthquakes in divers places.
31 Yea, it shall come in a day when there shall be great pollutions upon the face of the earth; there shall be murders, and robbing, and lying, and deceivings, and whoredoms, and all manner of abominations; when there shall be many who will say, Do this, or do that, and it mattereth not, for the Lord will uphold such at the last day. But wo unto such, for they are in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity.
32 Yea, it shall come in a day when there shall be churches built up that shall say: Come unto me, and for your money you shall be forgiven of your sins.
33 O ye wicked and perverse and stiffnecked people, why have ye built up churches unto yourselves to get gain? Why have ye transfigured the holy word of God, that ye might bring damnation upon your souls? Behold, look ye unto the revelations of God; for behold, the time cometh at that day when all these things must be fulfilled.
34 Behold, the Lord hath shown unto me great and marvelous things concerning that which must shortly come, at that day when these things shall come forth among you.
35 Behold, I speak unto you as if ye were present, and yet ye are not. But behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing.
36 And I know that ye do walk in the pride of your hearts; and there are none save a few only who do not lift themselves up in the pride of their hearts, unto the wearing of very fine apparel, unto envying, and strifes, and malice, and persecutions, and all manner of iniquities; and your churches, yea, even every one, have become polluted because of the pride of your hearts.
37 For behold, ye do love money, and your substance, and your fine apparel, and the adorning of your churches, more than ye love the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted.
38 O ye pollutions, ye hypocrites, ye teachers, who sell yourselves for that which will canker, why have ye polluted the holy church of God? Why are ye ashamed to take upon you the name of Christ? Why do ye not think that greater is the value of an endless happiness than that misery which never dies—because of the praise of the world?
39 Why do ye adorn yourselves with that which hath no life, and yet suffer the hungry, and the needy, and the naked, and the sick and the afflicted to pass by you, and notice them not?
40 Yea, why do ye build up your secret abominations to get gain, and cause that widows should mourn before the Lord, and also orphans to mourn before the Lord, and also the blood of their fathers and their husbands to cry unto the Lord from the ground, for vengeance upon your heads?
41 Behold, the sword of vengeance hangeth over you; and the time soon cometh that he avengeth the blood of the saints upon you, for he will not suffer their cries any longer.⁵

So which, in these latter days, will prove more dangerous—corrupted candidates? or the voice of “a stiffnecked [blind and deaf] people”?

Note to “we the people”: If “we the people” think we are backing a “good” candidate (be he/she right or left, R or D, male or female, corporate or political), prophecy would suggest we are not. Prophecy would also suggest that we are presently spinning into the woe levels of déjà vu, utterly blind and deaf to our own iniquities.

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1. http://www.dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/2016/03/daze-of-yore-and-fore.html
2. Book of Mormon | Mosiah 29:27
3. Book of Mormon | Helaman 5:2-3
4. Book of Mormon | Mormon 5:17-18
5. Book of Mormon | Mormon 8:26-41

“My Word”

(A repost from Déjà Vu~TimesTwo blog*)

“CERN's LHC [Large Hadron Collider¹] resumes experiments at record-breaking energy: New research seeks to understand dark matter and supersymmetry” (CBC ~ June 3, 2015).²

Aerial View of the CERN
This photograph was produced by CERN
Creative Commons licence ~ CC-BY-SA
(See footnote 8 for author and URL source)

**********************
3 And I, God, said: Let there be light; and there was light.
…
5 … and this I did by the word of my power, and it was done as I spake;
…
6 And again, I, God, said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and it was so, even as I spake; and I said: Let it divide the waters from the waters; and it was done;
7 And I, God, made the firmament and divided the waters, yea, the great waters under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so even as I spake.
…
9 And I, God, said: Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and it was so; and I, God, said: Let there be dry land; and it was so.
…
11 And I, God, said: Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, the fruit tree yielding fruit, after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed should be in itself upon the earth, and it was so even as I spake.
…
14 And I, God, said: Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years;
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth; and it was so.
16 And I, God, made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, and the greater light was the sun, and the lesser light was the moon; and the stars also were made even according to my word.
…
20 And I, God, said: Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl which may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
…
24 And I, God, said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind, and it was so;
…
26 And I, God, said unto mine Only Begotten, which was with me from the beginning: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and it was so.
…
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein I grant life, there shall be given every clean herb for meat; and it was so, even as I spake. (Pearl of Great Price | Moses 2)

So what does all this have to do with the CERN (LHC)? Perhaps this:

Behold, great and marvelous are the works of the Lord. How unsearchable are the depths of the mysteries of him; and it is impossible that man should find out all his ways. And no man knoweth of his ways save it be revealed unto him; wherefore, brethren, despise not the revelations of God. For behold, by the power of his word man came upon the face of the earth, which earth was created by the power of his word. Wherefore, if God being able to speak and the world was, and to speak and man was created, O then, why not able to command the earth, or the workmanship of his hands upon the face of it, according to his will and pleasure? (Book of Mormon | Jacob 4:8-9)

Do we really think we can come to know the mysteries of the Universe by the violent smashing of particles to see what might happen?!!

Are we that arrogant, irresponsible, reckless, careless, negligent, foolish, rash, immature???

Instead of bringing our lives into conformity with the will and mind of God and preparing our souls to receive (to be trusted with the power of) His mysteries, we spend billions to fund a 27-km (17-mile) long tube to smash particles together “that scientists hope might help crack the mystery of ‘dark matter’.”⁽²⁾

Is this a variation of (attempted) queue-jumping?³

Perhaps the mystery of “dark matter” is really to be found by looking inward—into the hubristic human heart.

Should it not be enlightening that God speaks and matter/elements obey (His word)? But man—who seeks not the gift of charity;⁴ who has not cultivated honor, love, and righteous influence—turns to mechanization, force, manipulation, violence, and little-bangs(??!!!), so he can take “a step forward in the sensitivity[??] to possible new physics[.]”⁵

So to believers in God, who are blissfully and obliviously basking in the “blessings” of the world (aka: Babylon), and who are in for a series of “shock and awful” awakenings, perhaps we should begin to remember:

I [the Lord your God, even Jesus Christ, the Great I AM, Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end] am the same which spake, and the world was made, and all things came by me. (Doctrine and Covenants | Section 38:3[1])

So if all things came by Him, they will also GO by Him. Puny (d-lluminati?) man (including his “not-so-alien” consorts⁶) with all his hidden technologies, connivings, and strategies will, in due course, find himself—despite his grand oaths and secrets—in likeness to the army of Sennacherib who were suddenly “all dead corpses.” (Old Testament | Isaiah 37:36)

Should we beware the déjà vus?!—the repeated warnings?

Do we love darkness more than light?⁷

When we begin to see the light that has always been here (even in the darkness), here is a word that should become indelibly imprinted in our minds to get us through the tribulation:

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded: they shall be as nothing; and they that strive with thee shall perish. Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them, even them that contended with thee: they that war against thee shall be as nothing, and as a thing of nought. For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee. (Old Testament | Isaiah 41:10-13)

If we can’t remember anything else in the depth of our repentance and anguish, remember this:

Fear not, I will help thee.

PS: This post in NOT a condemnation of all scientists or researchers who work at CERN or elsewhere, but it is a condemnation of hubristic science, deceptions, corruptions, and the pursuit of power, gain, and prestige without regard for our beloved, indispensable planet and all her inhabitants.

PPS: An additional word:

7 O how great is the nothingness of the children of men; yea, even they are less than the dust of the earth.
8 For behold, the dust of the earth moveth hither and thither, to the dividing asunder, at the command of our great and everlasting God.
9 Yea, behold at his voice do the hills and the mountains tremble and quake.
10 And by the power of his voice they are broken up, and become smooth, yea, even like unto a valley.
11 Yea, by the power of his voice doth the whole earth shake;
12 Yea, by the power of his voice, do the foundations rock, even to the very center.
13 Yea, and if he say unto the earth—Move—it is moved.
14 Yea, if he say unto the earth—Thou shalt go back, that it lengthen out the day for many hours—it is done;
15 And thus, according to his word the earth goeth back, and it appeareth unto man that the sun standeth still; yea, and behold, this is so; for surely it is the earth that moveth and not the sun.
16 And behold, also, if he say unto the waters of the great deep—Be thou dried up—it is done.
17 Behold, if he say unto this mountain—Be thou raised up, and come over and fall upon that city, that it be buried up—behold it is done.
18 And behold, if a man hide up a treasure in the earth, and the Lord shall say—Let it be accursed, because of the iniquity of him who hath hid it up—behold, it shall be accursed.
19 And if the Lord shall say—Be thou accursed, that no man shall find thee from this time henceforth and forever—behold, no man getteth it henceforth and forever.
20 And behold, if the Lord shall say unto a man—Because of thine iniquities, thou shalt be accursed forever—it shall be done.
21 And if the Lord shall say—Because of thine iniquities thou shalt be cut off from my presence—he will cause that it shall be so.
22 And wo unto him to whom he shall say this, for it shall be unto him that will do iniquity, and he cannot be saved; therefore, for this cause, that men might be saved, hath repentance been declared.
23 Therefore, blessed are they who will repent and hearken unto the voice of the Lord their God; for these are they that shall be saved.
24 And may God grant, in his great fulness, that men might be brought unto repentance and good works, that they might be restored unto grace for grace, according to their works. (Book of Mormon | Helaman 12:7-24; bold emphasis added in all quoted scripture herein and above.)

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*Repost site: http://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.ca/2015/07/my-word.html (Saturday, 25 July 2015).
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN
2. “CERN's LHC resumes experiments at record-breaking energy: New research seeks to understand dark matter and supersymmetry” at http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/cern-s-lhc-resumes-experiments-at-record-breaking-energy-1.3098247
3. Q-jumping? at http://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.ca/2015/03/q-jumping.html . So instead of nurturing the “power of faith and the spoken word”—For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith (New Testament | Mark 11:23)—we turn to force and mechanistic/hi-tech contortions, or increasingly, to the “mysteries” of the occult, dark magics, and faux-light of master deceivers (on the have-now-pay-later plan).
4. New Testament | 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 ~ Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth:
5. Quoted from http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/cern-s-lhc-resumes-experiments-at-record-breaking-energy-1.3098247 . And what might this word “sensitivity” mean? Could it be a way to mask science’s outreach toward (and increasing fascination with) the occult and paranormal?
6. http://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.ca/2015/02/heads-up.html ; http://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.ca/2015/03/another-heads-up.html
7. Doctrine and Covenants | Section 29:45 ~ For they love darkness rather than light, and their deeds are evil, and they receive their wages of whom they list to obey.
Old Testament | Isaiah 5:20-21 ~ Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!
8. Image found at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CERN_Aerial_View.jpg ; Author: Maximilien Brice (CERN); Date: 15 July 2008; Source: CERN Document Server; Original URL: https://cds.cern.ch/record/1295244

Blinding Paradigms?

At some future day, say even 100 years hence, will observers look back upon the age of baby-boomers and their offspring as a bizarre time of dizzying technology AND stupefying intransigence? Will someone begin to quote Charles Dickens,¹ lamenting:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of [staggering stupidity hubris]”?

And will someone observe that great crimes were orchestrated by “tight-lipped authorities” who believed that their “superlative truisms” governed the cosmos and all therein and thereout?

▪ Will we even be here in 100 years (yea, even 50) if geoengineering² and HAARP³ (et ilk) continue their secret combinations (chemical and otherwise)?

▪ Will corporate capitalism⁴ have lost its gloss in the wake of cause, effect, consequence and destruction; and will it finally be observed that the “capital system” damned more creativity and innovation than it ever encouraged?

▪ Will the nuclear energy industry have finally drowned in its own indestructible, toxic waste?

▪ Will militant scientists atheists finally be recognized for what they are: dogma-driven tyrants—as déjà vu the Inquisition as every other militant bully of past and present?

▪ Will the lies of GMO and industry-sponsored “studies” finally be acknowledged as profit-driven frauds?⁵

▪ Will the Big Business of fast-food & health chronic sickness finally admit that what is ingested makes a difference?

▪ Will the medical and psychiatric professions have finally accepted evidence-based  (i.e., mostly non-profit and non-pharmaceutical) solutions to the recurring / enduring pain epidemics?⁶

▪ Will the Electric Universe⁷ (and other theories that challenge the standard model) have been given a fair and open hearing?

▪ Will “cultural superiority” have given way to the observation that ancient civilizations knew and achieved things we haven’t begun to match?⁸ that progress has not been linear and gradual? that civilizations, equal or superior, have fallen into dust in obsessive pursuit of excess, disparity, power, and gain? (Oh, déjà vu—again!)

▪ Will the predilection to conspiracy by those pursuing power and gain (and their desperation to deny it) finally be openly acknowledged as a ubiquitous, historical déjà vu?

▪ Will citizens of the “great superpower” ever admit the pivotal role their nation played in the destruction of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, worldwide?⁹

▪ Will the CAO’s of geoengineering and HAARP be tried and condemned for acts of supreme conceit and criminality (before it’s too late)?

The list could go on and on.

And for those who think that God (plus all the above) is just another blinding paradigm, I suppose we shall all know, sooner or later.

-----------------/
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_of_Two_Cities
2. http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/ ; See also YouTube on geoengineering: e.g., David Lim, March 2013.at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h57c3WtSiM8 (1:23:55 min.) ; Dane Wigington at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ-tph5s_GM (48:05 min.), etc.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program ; see also http://www.earthpulse.com/src/category.asp?catid=1 ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74b-gA9qq3o ; Book: Angels Don't Play This HAARP by Nick Begich and Jeane Manning; Word-Picture; http://www.dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/2011/09/p-con-002-not-to-worry.html
4. http://www.dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/search/label/Corporatism
5. GMO, etc.: http://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.ca/2012/10/some-choice.html
6. The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain by John E. Sarno, M.D.; Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker; podcast: Robert Whitaker on Psychiatric Drugs at http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/features/2014/06/08/robert-whitaker-on-psychiatric-drugs/
7. Electric Universe: https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/ ; http://www.holoscience.com/wp/
8. This is not to say that modern scientific and mechanistic man has not achieved incredible things (a current example being the Rosetta mission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(spacecraft)), but it is to say: It is highly unlikely that our mechanical and energy systems are the only or even most efficient systems possible in making great discoveries or advancements. Much has been lost from the past, even as our advancements will be lost in time if we do not learn the philosophic and moral lessons of history.
9. Whether one agrees with their politics or not, there is much to learn from the facts and warning voices of Chris Hedges, Chalmers Johnson, Jeremy Scahill, Naomi Klein, Stephen Kinzer, Noam Chomsky, etc., etc., etc. Take time to read their books or "YouTube" them. It’s time! Perhaps past time.

Free for All Some

If you were a writer and wanted to hype your income (and had the means), a sure-fire way to do it would be to buy tons of your own books and store them in some warehouse. Then after a short period of time, you could put them back on the market—with a price increase, of course, because sales had been so phenomenal. (Supply! Interest! Demand! you know!) Then after a time, you could buy your unsold books back again. The cycle could repeat itself several times before things began to wear thin (like the cover perhaps; or the disparity between income and cost).

So far, this buyback strategy seems to be working for many of our HyPEs (Highly Paid Employees) in the corporate world. For them, it works to have the corp buy back its shares. The share price goes up; the bright HyPE looks great; s/he collects the contracted "performance" bonus; and thereafter spends more time at work trying to figure out how to make it happen again; and where to spend or invest the income bump.

 Buyback is becoming a super duper¹ profitable strategy (at least for some).

Here is the take by financial writer Don Pittis²:

If someone handed you a bundle of free cash, would you stop working?

Perhaps that's what has happened to our economy. As governments create more and more free money ^[3]— in the form of no-interest loans — and inject it into the financial system, companies have stopped investing in the future.

Instead, as Edward Luce noted the other day in the Financial Times, companies are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into share buybacks that produce nothing. Except higher share prices, and therefore higher executive bonuses.

"If you need an explanation for why the top 0.1 per cent is doing so well," says Luce,^[4] that is where to look. Luce's solution is to change the rules so that executive earnings are based on something other than short-term share prices.

The proposed solutions may need a second look, but here again, we see (déjà vu!) one more case of the “Growth Fund” syndrome.⁵

How long do we keep duping ourselves?

-----------------------------/
1. http://dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/2011/11/confession-of-dupe-dealer.html or http://dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/search/label/Dupers
2. http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/free-money-for-all-could-jumpstart-the-economy-don-pittis-1.2775647?cmp=rss  (cbcnews Business: Don Pittis, Sep 24, 2014)
3. http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/desperately-seeking-economic-health-in-the-era-of-free-money-don-pittis-1.2756004 (cbcnews Business: Don Pittis, Sep 05, 2014)
4. The article in the Financial Times, dated September 21, 2014, and written by Edward Luce is titled: “The short-sighted US buyback boom.” It can be found, if you have an FT subscription, at: http://www.ft.com/home/us
5. http://www.dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/2011/04/growth-funds.html ; http://www.dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/2011/03/vast-fund-of-stupidity-recycling.html

TransAlta Culpa (Again) ?

A bottomless pit of contrivance?
(from office.microsoft.com)

A few days ago in Alberta, a heat spike was forecast. The power-generating giant TransAlta seems to have anticipated its own spike as two of its large coal-fired electricity generating plants were shut down for “unscheduled maintenance” creating a classic supply and demand divergence—huge demand with limited supply, with the resultant classic free-market spike.

Are we surprised? Why shouldn’t this be the rational, transnational strategy for all corporations that “live and breathe” the bottom line? Makes perfect cents (by the trillions).

Oh, and yes! We have seen this before. As recently as February of this year at:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/transalta-accused-of-manipulating-energy-prices-in-alberta-1.2554508?cmp=rss (*) Quote:

“Alberta's power-generating giant TransAlta has been accused of market manipulation again.
“The power company is in trouble with the province's electricity watchdog — the Market Surveillance Administrator (MSA).
“It says the company shut down some of its power plants on four occasions during peak periods in 2010 and 2011, driving up prices.
“TransAlta rejects the allegations, but the case is already prompting calls for tougher regulation of the electricity market. …
“… this isn't the first time TransAlta has faced allegations like this.
“The company was fined $370,000 in 2012 for market manipulation.”

So what does free market really mean? Free to manipulate supply and demand for profit? Free to get off almost scot-free when caught? Free to repeat in endless déjà vu?

And what power-generating corporation has not clued into this “spike and spin-dry” strategy? When weighing gains and losses, who can resist?

So, in years to come, will our current free-marketeer defenders be judged as blind and deaf to “realities” (as passionately unobserving) as those we have judged from the so-called “dark ages”?

Is dummkoph-ish the word that springs to mind for our day (and for all of us who sit back and let this happen time and again)?

-----------------------------/
* See also: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/transalta-admits-to-manipulating-electricity-prices-1.976969

Bawdy Politics ?

(OR, Alas! Alas! Wo is US!)

In remembrance of the 120th year of the death of

Joseph Ferdinand Keppler (1 February 1838 Vienna – 19 February 1894 New York) … an Austrian-born American cartoonist and caricaturist, who greatly influenced the growth of satirical cartooning in the United States;^[*]

and the 125th year of the publication of his The Bosses of the Senate^[†], I repost his sadly enduring look at puppetry, power, and “bawdy politics”:

The Bosses of the Senate by
Joseph Keppler [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
First published in Puck 1889.
page URL: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_Bosses_of_the_Senate_by_Joseph_Keppler.jpg
file URL: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/The_Bosses_of_the_Senate_by_Joseph_Keppler.jpg

How many déjà vus before we actually VU? and then DO something about this?! And that includes especially you: SCOTUS, POTUS, SOTUS, and HOROTUS!

PS: If “bawdy politics” can describe the (past and current) Senate, what might we call the House^‡?!

------------------------------/
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Ferdinand_Keppler
† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Bosses_of_the_Senate_by_Joseph_Keppler.jpg
‡ (being the House of Representatives, which, in this age of abbreviation and economy, may be shortened to HOR, which surprisingly!! may be a synonym!)

Cruz-control?

Some have been referring to Senator Ted Cruz as a true, Right-wing “Cruz Missile” destined to decimate the intransigent, left-wing liberals and their BIG government. For the record, here is a definition of cruise missile.

A cruise missile is a guided missile, the major portion of whose flight path to its target ... is conducted at approximately constant velocity; that relies on the dynamic reaction of air for lift, and upon propulsion forces to balance drag. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhead over long distances with high accuracy. Modern cruise missiles can travel at supersonic or high subsonic speeds, are self-navigating, and can fly on a non-ballistic, extremely low altitude trajectory. They are distinct from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in that they are used only as weapons and not for reconnaissance. In a cruise missile, the warhead is integrated into the vehicle and the vehicle is always sacrificed in the mission.

Cruise missile designs fundamentally derive from the German V-1 of World War II. Advances in transistor and computer technology have contributed to self-correcting avionic and aeronautical designs that allow missiles to be guided in flight, as opposed to only at launch. These advances developed into guided missiles and guided bombs, and later into the modern cruise missile. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_missile : bold emphasis mine)

When one listens to his words, Ted Cruz does seem guided (at times) by many good principles, and he also seems gifted (at times) with traits of leadership, intelligence, conviction, and self-confidence. YET somehow, the déjà vu of similarly-gifted, historical leaders parades in memory, so here is a prediction from the too frequent déjà vu of history. Will we, within the coming decade, review these (bolded) words:

guided
air for lift
propulsion forces
large warhead
supersonic
subsonic
self-navigating
low altitude
used only as weapons
self-correcting

and ask ourselves if “seeing, we chose to see not and hearing, we chose to hear not” what was coming?

What is the repeating history of the rich, powerful, and intelligent who self-navigate? And what is the frequent fate of that self-navigation? Desolation?

Again, just asking that we proceed with caution; that we don't forget history; that we pay attention to the symbolic warnings contained in these "cruise missile" words.

----------------------/
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz (Junior U.S. Republican Senator from Texas, elected in 2013.)

Accessory?

From Wikipedia¹:

An accessory is a person who assists in the commission of a crime, but who does not actually participate in the commission of the crime as a joint principal. The distinction between an accessory and a principal is a question of fact and degree:

● The principal is the one whose acts or omissions, accompanied by the relevant mens rea (Latin for "guilty mind"), are the most immediate cause of the actus reus (Latin for "guilty act").

● If two or more people are directly responsible for the actus reus, they can be charged as joint principals (see common purpose). The test to distinguish a joint principal from an accessory is whether the defendant independently contributed to causing the actus reus rather than merely giving generalised and/or limited help and encouragement.

In the United States, a person who learns of the crime and gives some form of assistance before the crime is committed is known as an "accessory before the fact". A person who learns of the crime after it is committed and helps the criminal to conceal it, or aids the criminal in escaping, or simply fails to report the crime, is known as an "accessory after the fact". A person who does both is sometimes referred to as an "accessory before and after the fact", but this usage is less common [bold emphasis added].

SO, if one is hired by a company (or country) and told to keep its unlawful, unconstitutional, fraudulent, or deceptive activities quiet (or perhaps even to carry them out), AND WE DO, what does that make us?

How many accessories and principals are out there in our beloved countries? Out there and afraid? Afraid to lose jobs? reputations? homes? loved ones? freedoms? perhaps their very lives?

Any déjà vu here?

Why have we begun to look so much like our former AND current enemies?

How about we have an international re-screening of Judgment at Nuremberg? How about doing it on September 28, the International Right to Know Day²? Or better yet, do it on September 29 and call it the International Responsibility to Know Day, since so many of us seem to prefer to NOT know those things that challenge our preconceptions of self and country?

Will we too, in some future year, when things have run their course down this slippery slope of suspicion, surveillance, and surreptitious “judgment,” hear some judge say to us:

The charge is that of conscious participation in a government-sanctioned system of cruelty and injustice in violation of every moral and legal principle known to all civilized nations. The tribunal has carefully studied the record and found therein abundant evidence to support beyond a reasonable doubt the charges against these defendants.³

------------------/
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_(legal_term)
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Right_to_Know_Day
3. From the screenplay, Judgment at Nuremberg.

Snow Job?

Does it not seem in these latter days that blizzards of deceit and myopia are getting thicker and thicker as co-offenders attempt, with desperation, to obscure, distort, or mis-remember events?

Take the blizzard surrounding Edward Snowden:¹

 Officials and reps on the right and left, crying out for the “rule of law” to be honored in extraditing and prosecuting a man for exposing secret, massive breaches of law by others. How about we take the words of John Boehner (et al.)² and add the names of all the guilty (including sanctioning politicians) in this “giant violation of law.”

Take the blizzard surrounding Benghazi:

 How soon we seem to forget the facts of “9-11” and numerous other embassy deaths in past years as we point fingers of outrage.

Take the blizzard surrounding the IRS scandal:

 How duplicitous to stand atop a heap of one’s own still secret “targets” (past and present) and point with indignation at another’s targets.

Does not the Ministry of Truth from Orwell’s 1984 seems alive and well as we frame and reframe events to conform to our 180° view of a 360° world?

------------------------/
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden
2. http://www.thedailybeast.com/videos/2013/06/14/edward-snowden-u-s-traitor.html

Déjà vu: Back & So-Forth



Isocrates ~ 436-338 BC: “Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress.”

WikiCommons ~ Public Domain

I am almost finished Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World (2011) by Michael Lewis* ~ another witness to the insanity of our financial times. Thousands of witnesses now stacked in chronological order upon the prescience of Isaiah the prophet.

Why is it that seeing, so many still do not see and hearing, so many still do not hear, decade after decade, debacle after debacle, libertarian upon libertarian?

Has not corruption proven itself to be the encoded, invariable, inexorable constant of unregulated, deregulated, poorly regulated:**

▪ Money concentration
▪ Power concentration
▪ Speculation (read: financial markets, etc.)
▪ BIGGER is better obsessives
▪ Charities
▪ Corporations
▪ Governments
▪ Lobbyists
▪ NGOs
▪ PACs
▪ PR firms
▪ Profiteers (of every stripe)
▪ Work sites (of every kind)
▪ & so forth, & so forth?

Doesn’t balance mean a little right, a little left, and a whole lot of middle in controlling these “feet that be swift in [forever] running to mischief” (Prov. 6:17)?

------------------
* (where he quotes the above Isocrates at page 81)
** (read: appropriate, enforceable checks and balances)

Confession of a Dupe Dealer

(va: To dupers and dupees everywhere)

The Thinker by Auguste Rodin
at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor
Image from Wikimedia Commons
Public Domain: Author, Karora

On odd occasions, one can encounter contrition in the red-white-&-blue, balloon-strewn ballroom of 6-AM, post-convention chaos. That’s where I encountered PR. He was alone, seated in Thinker repose, a damp hanky drying upon his knee. He’d had a dream, he said. Maybe more like a vision. If he publically confessed, he said, there was some unspecified chance he could clear the inside edge of outer darkness. Infinitely better than achieving the nucleus, he’d been told. Thus, he’d descended from his sky-suite to make confession. Not a “public” soul was anywhere in sight. He was grateful I had come, he said. Did I think I could be considered public enough? I said I didn’t know, but perhaps we could try. (I didn’t tell him I was there to recycle the balloons. He never asked.)

He wanted his confession recorded, he said. Maybe that would make it public enough. I turned on my phone recorder. He spoke:

▪ I preached that repeating a fabrication often enough made it sound true. It does, but it’s still a lie.
▪ I claimed that crafted words would cover a multitude of sins. I was wrong.
▪ I crafted lies to malign the strengths of opponents. Such was inexcusably wrong.
▪ I thought selling colleagues my right words would be smart. It wasn’t. They sounded scripted and mindless when juxtaposed.
▪ I sponsored lies to counter worse lies. I severely offended truth.
▪ I thought pointing fingers would deflect judgment. It doesn’t.
▪ I claimed that free/unregulated markets were fair. They’re not. They never have been. They always become regulated by tyrannies of some form or other.
▪ I said unregulated markets would control greed, excess, and inefficiency through competition. It was a lie.
▪ I said profit seekers could be trusted to self-regulate. They can’t.
▪ I said invasive redistribution of wealth was wrong. I was right. Except I was wrong about the historical and persisting direction of flow.
▪ I said employees would be honestly and fairly compensated in the competitive profit system. It was mostly a lie.
▪ I disparaged the time, talents, knowledge, skills, and labor of workers as the purest form of wealth (excepting, of course, when considering the upper-crust). I was wrong to foster that demoralizing corruption.
▪ I said corporations were like people. I was wrong.
▪ I said corporations were the job creators. I was less than half-right.
▪ I claimed money did not compromise democracy—that it lubricated it. Another lie.
▪ I promoted that extremism in defense of liberty was no vice. I was extremely wrong.
▪ I said riches were God’s reward. I was wrong. They are His toughest test.
▪ I claimed socialism/communism was our worst enemy. I was wrong. We capital dupers are.
▪ … … … [etc., until—]
▪ In short, I have been a dupe dealer all my life—a 1st-class duper. Actually a super-duper. I’ve taught and scripted thousands of other dupers. I have, with my crafted words, created millions of dupees. I told myself it was justified. It was for a good cause. It was in defense of God, country, and free-markets. It turned out to be the precise opposite.
▪ I was shown an even more skilled super-duper. I was shocked. I’d been a dupee, too! OK, OK, I wasn’t really shocked. I kinda knew all along. I just didn’t want to admit—I really enjoyed being a super-duper. It fulfilled all three of the Big Temptations. It was incredibly rewarding. I was warned about that, too—about confession and then recidivism.
▪ I’m very conflicted. If this really goes public, what will become of me?
▪ Anyway, it’s all just déjà vu, from what I saw.
▪ Dupers and dupees everywhere.
▪ Hearing and hearing not. Seeing and seeing not. I read that somewhere once. I wonder where that was?

-------------/
Thanks to Calvin Trillin for sparking this title idea with “Confessions of a Dupe” from With All Disrespect: More Uncivil Liberties by Calvin Trillin © 1985, p. 80.

Beware the Optimates!

After nearly four centuries of Republican government, Rome began its century-long descent toward tyranny¹ beginning about 133 BC with the murder of the Gracchus brothers.² Perhaps the chief facilitator of that descent was the conservative/traditionalist group of elites in the Roman Senate—a group that came to be dubbed the optimates (“the best”).³ They claimed to be defending and preserving the “old values,” yet their tactics were chiefly to preserve their own interests and the status quo of wealth and power. Is there any equivalency in our day to these optimates and their tactics? Any déjà vu?

The optimates:

▪ supported the aristocracy of wealth and power
▪ blocked the wishes of others groups
▪ labeled their opponents “demagogues”
▪ resorted to violence on an increasing scale
▪ used the backing of the aristocracy and the senate to achieve personal goals (via rampant corruption)
▪ opposed the extension of Roman citizenship,
▪ sought (or claimed to) the preservation of the mos maiorum, the ways of their forefathers.
▪ called themselves “liberators”
▪ published lists of those they considered enemies of the state and legislated “open season” on them⁴

Their opponents, the populares, had their own hypocrisies and in the end, the struggle between the optimates and the populares was “more about power than the public good” because, despite seductive words, no one was seeking the true interests of the Republic or of the people. The ploy, by both factions, was to gain support and votes while holding onto (or gaining new) wealth and power.⁵

“What happened to the Roman Republic?” is summarized by a Great Courses scholar⁶ and set forth, in part, as follows:

▪ Power, influence, and unimaginable wealth [often from vast plunder] could be won in the empire and deployed in Rome with no checks by the traditional system.
▪ People became inured to violence and quite willing to use it against fellow citizens.
▪ Disruptions in the countryside led to countless numbers of landless, rootless people who felt no sense of commitment to any old-fashioned values.⁷

Why can we not see how little has changed in 2000 years?—how we have our own collectivized aristocracy (corporatocracy) intent on preserving their own interests with the support and rhetoric of our optimates; how corrupted our politics has become by wealth and power; how insular and prone to violence our optimates are in their speech and imagery; how suckered we are by words?

Will we ever learn?

-------------/
References:
1. Tyranny can sometimes be benevolent, and Rome experienced several benevolent emperors, but many of the gains of the Republic were lost in the descent from the “rule of law” to “rule by emperor.”
2. See “The Foundations of Western Civilization,” Lecture 20, Rome—From Republic to Empire, taught by Professor Thomas F.X. Noble, The Great Courses: The Teaching Company © 2002. See pp. 83-86 of the accompanying Course Guidebook.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimates
4. During Sulla’s reign “Any man whose name appeared on the list was ipso facto stripped of his citizenship and excluded from all protection under law; reward money was given to any informer who gave information leading to the death of a proscribed man and any person who killed a proscribed man was entitled to keep part of his estate (the remainder went to the state). No person could inherit money or property from the proscribed men, nor could any woman married to a proscribed man remarry after his death. Many victims of proscription were decapitated and their heads were displayed on spears in the Forum.” See “Proscription of 82 BC” and “Proscription of 43 BC” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proscription
5. http://www.roman-empire.net/society/society.html
6. See footnote 2 above.
7. Like “Do unto others …”, honesty, integrity, generosity, compassion, etc.

The Looming Great Divorce

(or When are we going to open our eyes and ears that we might SEE and HEAR?!!)

“Almost thou persuadest me [NOT] to be a Christian!”¹

That was my first reaction upon reading an email forward sent by a good Christian lady. So here is my latest “whoa, woe, whoa!!!” This church sister introduced her “forward” thus:

THIS LADY NOT ONLY HAS A GRASP OF 'THE SITUATION' BUT AN INCREDIBLE COMMAND OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!
[“THIS LADY” is allegedly Cyndy Miller, writer of a letter to AARP.²]

Cyndy’s letter followed and set forth her reasons for declining to renew AARP membership because AARP’s “Divided We Fail” and other “Socialistic politics” are viewed by Cyndy as “threatening our way of life [and] offending our sensibilities.” Cyndy declares that “when the opinions and long term goals are diametrically opposed, the divorce is imminent.” And so she divorces AARP and decries “This Presidential Administration [that] scares the living daylights out of us.” [Did the prior presidential administration scare her? She does not say!]

Then Cyndy gets to the apparent “meat” of her regrettable divorce from AARP; a part that appears to “raise the blood pressure [her] medical insurance strives to contain.” She writes:

“Your [AARP] website generously offers us the opportunity to receive all communication in Spanish.. ARE YOU KIDDING??? Someone has broken into our 'house', invaded our home without our invitation or consent. The President has insisted we keep the perpetrator in comfort and learn the perp language so we can communicate our reluctant welcome to them.
I DON'T choose to welcome them.
I DON'T choose to support them.
I DON'T choose to educate them.
I DON'T choose to medicate them, pay for their food or clothing. …”
[etc., etc. Emphasis all hers.]

Now, of course, I’m not going to jettison my faith because a Christian “forwarder” thinks there is “grasp and command” in this divorce decree.³ But it set me to thinking about the coming Great Divorce—the one many of my church and/or fellow-Americans don’t seem to realize is increasingly imperative. It is the divorce looming between their professed Christian⁴ allegiance and the current STATE of their politics. How the incompatibility has endured so long is already beyond comprehension!

So, for just a moment, I ask my Christian friends—many of whom are conservative Republicans: Will you honestly look at the STATE of YOUR politics? NOT your enemy’s politics, but YOURS.

What is the state of things when radio/TV pundits become more quotable, reliable, and fundamental than the Sermon on the Mount?! When ends claim to justify means? When deception and spin are strategized? When finance capital dictates governance? When extremism in the defense of “liberty” is deemed patriotic? Where sound bites substitute for informed research? When your GOP says one thing with its mouth and does another with its power?

How long can you pretend YOUR political “spouse” is being faithful to founding principles and values? Look at your record! Your documented history! Your investigations! Your subterfuges! Hear the eye-witnesses! The whistleblowers! The sworn testimonies!⁵

Why do you castigate only the infidelities of your enemy’s “spouse”? Is THAT helping your own degraded house? Open your eyes! Open your ears!

How long can you ignore the egregious incompatibilities between GOP words and practices? Between values and actions? Why do you dismiss with alacrity and scorn all criticisms as if they were but false and hostile smears upon a pristine conscience?

Do we imagine a professedly “chosen” people (or party, religion, nation, ideology, constitution, etc.) is immune to folly, error, deception, corruption? Perhaps a brief tour of the gifted and chosen ones of history would be instructive. Count how many were swept away in whirlpools of stiffneckedness, excess, and folly. How few died in the harness of integrity, humility, purpose, and honor.

We are not going to clean up the mess of our universal corruption and partisanship by focusing solely on the crimes and corruptions of “enemies.” We must first look to our own ways and affiliations. What did Biblical Micah caution? “… a man's enemies are the men of his own house.”⁶ And please, instead of knee-jerking to accuse and fault your perceived enemies in the national house, look first to the threats and offenses from within your own GOP house.

In this current state of politics, surely it is time to reject the blindness of partisanship and unthinking loyalties. It is time to demand more of ourselves than we do of our “enemies.” It is time to reject rampant, internal hypocrisies; to refuse the propaganda of PACs and the persuasions of mammon.⁷ It is time to seek out and support honest, wise, good, and courageous candidates free of compromising ties and dictates. It is time for self- and party-awareness. It is time to take a new moral way. It is way beyond time.

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(For those who wish to know my views on the Democrats, capitalism, socialism, free-market myths, the dire state of America's democratic values and republican form of government, etc. you may peruse other Déjà Vu posts.)

1 New Testament Acts 26:28
2 AARP: American Association of Retired Persons
3 Of course, Cyndy has every right to reject the philosophies and practices of the AARP, if they conflict with hers, but the tragic thing is, too many partisans utterly fail to comprehend the present chasm between professed values and opposing actions. Their focus remains unwaveringly on their enemy to the exclusion of self-awareness—a classic diverting strategy promoted by C.S. Lewis’ astute senior demon, Screwtape (from The Screwtape Letters, 1942).
4 Applicable to other religious faiths and ethical adherents because most acknowledge a common set of human and moral values.
5 There are hundreds of meticulously, documented studies, books, and articles that are dismissed or ignored because: 1) they do not sustain the myths of rightness, justification, and ideology; 2) they are strategized as aiding and abetting the “enemy”; and 3) it takes so much precious time to sift truth from half-truths and error when lives are already so time-and info-stressed. Perhaps one approach is to prefer confirmed and documented information over passionate denials or justifications.
6 Old Testament Micah 7:6
7 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon (New Testament Matthew 6:24).

ORGONITES & TARTUFFEITES: Oh, what a tangled, political web we have woven!!!

[Source: Tartuffe by Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière (1622-1673); Project Gutenberg EBook #2027; first written and performed in 1664. Oh,déjà vu!]

CLEANTE [brother-in-law of Orgon]
That is the usual strain of all your kind;
They must have every one as blind as they.
They call you atheist [or anti-American] if you have [differing views];
And if you don't adore their vain grimaces,
You've neither faith nor care for sacred [democratic] things.
…
What! Will you find no difference between
Hypocrisy and genuine [governance]?
And will you treat them both alike, and pay
The self-same honour both to masks and faces
Set artifice beside sincerity,
Confuse the semblance with reality,
Esteem a phantom like a living person,
And counterfeit as good as honest coin?
Men [& women], for the most part, are strange creatures, truly!
You never find them keep the golden mean;
The limits of good sense, too narrow for them,
Must always be passed by, in each direction;
They often spoil the noblest things, because
They go too far, and push them to extremes.
…
Just so I think there's naught more odious
Than whited sepulchres of outward unction,
Those barefaced charlatans, those hireling zealots,
Whose sacrilegious, treacherous pretence
Deceives at will, and with impunity
Makes mockery of all that men hold sacred;
Men [& women] who, enslaved to selfish interests,
Make trade and merchandise of [freedom],
And try to purchase influence and office
With false eye-rollings and affected raptures;
Those men [& women], I say, who with uncommon zeal
Seek their own fortunes on the road to heaven[ly prosperity];
Who, skilled in prayer [and profiteering], have always much to ask,
And live at court to preach retirement;
Who reconcile religion with their vices,
Are quick to anger, vengeful, faithless, tricky,
And, to destroy a man [or woman], will have the boldness
To call their private [or public] grudge the cause of heaven;^[1]
All the more dangerous, since in their anger
They use against us weapons men revere,
And since they make the world applaud their passion,
And seek to stab us with a sacred sword.
There are too many of this canting kind.
Still, the sincere are easy to distinguish;
And many splendid patterns may be found,
In our own time, before our very eyes.
(Molière’s Tartuffe, Act I, Scene vi)
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[1] Or manifest destiny, or true democracy, or patriotism

To Loyalists* Everywhere

(*Addressed specifically to every soul upset by Déjà Vu criticisms & more generally to Republicans, Democrats, Conservatives, Liberals, Socialists, Communists, rebels, terrorists, groupies, nationalists, globalists, sectarians, and loyal dependents of every stripe—including those dependent on an employer’s pay cheque^[1] or those intimidated by dependency into the façade of loyalty; etc., etc.)

Every desired value has its extremes, and LOYALTY has been pulled and pushed to the extreme since the dawn of power; pushed and pulled to that place where seeing we will not see, hearing we will not hear, and being challenged we will not read, research, investigate, or admit of any negatives.

This willful ignorance^[2] is the sad legacy of unquestioning loyalty to any person, cause, group, idea, or ideology. We mount our political, religious, or ideological high-horses and wield the sword of our various passionate loyalties striving to cut asunder all criticism and opposition. Thus, too many of us speak democratic principles with our lips but in our hearts and councils seek monopolies of thought, perspective, and action. We call our version “patriotic” or “the ONLY truth,” and resist with anger, the historical parallels—the corruptions, conspiracies, and crimes (the 3Cs) that forever tempt (and too often accompany) power and influence. For extreme loyalists, the 3Cs that might apply to their own loyalty are fiercely denied or justified for extenuating cause.

But questioning and requests for transparency and accountability are not acts of disloyalty. They are duties—obligations of intelligent life to demand balance, integrity, justice, equity, thought, and consideration. Intelligence demands accountability. Intelligence rejects the hypocrisy of saying one thing and doing another. That is how I see it, and that is why I “déjà vu” in the hope that my insights (perhaps mistaken at times) may help move us from intransigence to seeing, hearing, and investigating the full story of our loyalties; and to recognize both the richness and the tragic waste in the complex, precious, and déjà vu world of such loyalties.

[1] “It is difficult for them to see whose paycheck depends on them not seeing.” Upton Sinclair
[2] A version of the three-monkey stance: See no evil, hear no evil, & ask no question concerning the object of loyalty.