Celebrating His Coming

I enjoyed watching an Unshaken video going through Handel’s Messiah and listing all the ways that Jesus is referred to in that work, along with the scripture verses the words come from. Surprisingly, Messiah is only used in the title. The many other names all come from scriptures, most often Isaiah, I believe. I took those names and made a word cloud in the shape of a star. There are so many names, they’re mostly small here, to all fit, but they are all beautiful.

Another tribute to the many names we use for our Savior is a video from the several of the cast of The Chosen, from three years ago, talking about the names of God and their meanings. Here are the ones I was able to capture:

Adonai El-Roi               The God Who Sees Me

Jehovah Shalom             The Lord Is Our Peace

Jehovah Raah                The Lord Is My Shepherd

El Shaddai                    Almighty God

Emmanuel                    God With Us

As I'm enjoying the Christmas season, I also listened to Jonathan Cahn talking about the Bethlehem story. Most of these details I have heard over the years, but he puts them together beautifully. Bethlehem itself means house of bread in Hebrew. This is appropriate as the place where the Bread of Life came down from heaven to earth.

Jesus was born in a manger—a place of eating, for the animals. It was likely of stone, rather than wood, as is often depicted. Ahead of Passover, the newborn sacrificial lambs—the firstborn males without blemish—would be placed carefully in the manger, where they were swaddled in consecrated temple cloths to be inspected for blemishes. Bethlehem was the place in particular that the sacrificial lambs for the temple were raised. It is likely that the shepherds who saw the angels and were directed to seek the babe in the manger were the shepherds tending to the temple lambs.

a stone manger, image from Stone Manger—The Untold Story
of the First Christmas, by Jeffrey R. Chadwick

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, was also the sacrificial lamb. It seems fitting that he would be born in Bethlehem, where the sacrificial lambs of Passover were born.

Bethlehem, just on the outskirts of Jerusalem, is still surrounded by shepherds and their flocks in the fields. It is where David watched over the sheep as a boy, and practiced his harp music, and honed his skill with a sling, which he’d used to protect the sheep, and later to protect the Israelites from the Philistine giant, Goliath. David became king, and it was through his lineage that Jesus Christ was born; if all had been right through the ages, Jesus would have been the literal heir to the throne and King of the Jews.

Bethlehem was small and insignificant, as was David, the youngest son of his righteous but mostly insignificant family. But as with David, we are told not to look on the outward appearance (1 Samuel 16:7). Small and humble are qualities God works with to make great things come to pass.

Cahn also talks about the guell, or redeemer. There was a tradition that, if a man died childless, his brother or a close relative could marry his widow and provide a posterity for him. This was the case with Ruth and Boaz. Boaz, as well as the deceased husband of Ruth, the son of Naomi, to whom Boaz was a kinsman, was a descendant of King David. In the book of Ruth, we see that there is another kinsman who could have redeemed Ruth, but he chose not to and gave Boaz permission to be the redeemer. The place where Boaz redeemed Ruth happens to be Bethlehem.

As I understand it, another meaning of redeemer is one willing to pay the ransom price, if a wife is captured by an enemy. The promise to do this would be written in the betrothal contract, called the ketubah: the bridegroom would promise to redeem the bride if she were captured, because of his love and devotion to her.

Jesus Christ qualifies as the Redeemer of all of us, however you define it. He redeems us, to make our lives fruitful; He redeems us to save us from the captivity of sin.

I'd like to actually learn to paint someday, but in the meantime,
this is a little nativity painting I did for this year's Christmas card.

There’s a part, late in the video where Cahn talks about the Hebrew wedding tradition—one of my favorite things to study. He reminds us that the bridegroom needed to travel from his home to the home of the bride, to bring her back to his home with him. Christ came down from heaven, to our home here on earth, in order to bring us back to His home in heaven. I’m reminded of the second and third verses of the Christmas hymn “Once in Royal David’s City”:

2: He came down to earth from heaven,

Who is God and Lord of all,

And his shelter was a stable,

And his cradle was a stall;

With the poor, and mean, and lowly,

Lived on earth our Savior holy.

3: And our eyes at last shall see him,

Through his own redeeming love;

For that child so dear and gentle

Is our Lord in heav’n above,

And he leads his children on

To the place where he is gone.

            —words by Cecil Frances Alexander

May He lead us all home, to the place where He is gone.

Merry Christmas!

Still Fighting the Swamp in Texas

While this is a blog related to political philosophy, I only occasionally write about actual politics. But this is one of those days, with some inside baseball-type details.

Luke Macias, of Texas Scorecard, gives the details better than anybody, so you may want to listen to him on this. We’re talking about what happened last Saturday, December 7, when the Republican Caucus of the Texas House met to choose their speaker—or, technically, to go over rules and try to come to agreement. I think an actual physical vote happens in January when the full House meets at the start of session.

The Texas House is at a hinge point: either
keep the swamp or listen to the voice of
the people and let conservatives lead.
Image from a visit to the Texas Capitol
with the grandkids in 2018.

Texas is a red state, with blue and purple pockets, mainly in the big urban areas. And we just moved even more red this election. Even Harris County elected several Republican judges and a couple of other countywide positions. So you’d think it would be a given that the House Republicans would get together and agree on their leadership. But that hasn’t been happening.

This has been a frustration in the state for quite a while. Some nominal Republican makes backroom deals with the full contingent of Democrats, and then adds a few Republicans, and gets themselves elected as the Republican-majority Speaker. We saw it with Straus, and most recently with Dade Phelan. Phelan, you may recall, was on video, apparently drunk while wielding the gavel at the end of the 2023 session. I don’t know whether that was the actual explanation for the slurring, but it sure looked like it.

Phelan wielded a lot of power. He kept Republicans supporting him by giving money to their campaign coffers (I think he apportions it from some fund; it doesn’t come out of his own pocket), and by promising them committee assignments that matter to them. He does the same with Democrats.

In our platform, we’ve been calling for no Democrat committee chairs; Phelan refused to listen. So Phelan was primaried this past February, and people from around the state went to his district to block walk and do the retail campaign work. His opponent very nearly took him out, but Phelan managed to win—we think by having Democrats cross over and vote in the Republican Primary.

Phelan was insisting he’d be Speaker nevertheless. There were challengers, and it had come down to David Cook. Early on Tom Oliverson had put his hat in the ring; he’s local and reliably conservative, and promised to end the Democrat chairs so we could get some legislation through this next session. I don’t know when he dropped out, but the conservatives I know are satisfied with Cook. I don’t personally know much about him, so I am going on trust.

Rep. David Cook is the Republican Caucus choice for Texas House Speaker.
Image and contact info from his House website.

We precinct chairs wrote resolutions, and sent letters, emails, etc., to pressure our legislators to vote for a conservative who would end Democrat chairs—and that could not be Phelan. I think maybe Phelan felt the lack of support might be insurmountable, because of the disdain he has drawn. Anyway, last week he dropped out of the race—but recommended a substitute who would keep the little fiefdom of RINOs alive: Dustin Burrows. Burrows was the Calendars Committee Chair last session. And Calendars is where good bills go to die. In that position, he could just keep bills from getting a floor vote. The story of the last session was, good bills came out of the Senate, which either never got assigned to committee, or weren’t heard in committee, or didn’t come out of committee, or died in Calendars when didn’t get scheduled for a floor vote. The Governor’s priorities couldn’t even get done in multiple special sessions, after the failure of the regular session.

On Saturday, at that Caucus meeting, they decided on rules, which included that the entire Republican Caucus would vote together on their choice, rather than letting the Democrat minority plus a few Republicans choose the Speaker.

During two votes, no one got the needed number of votes. Then, during a short break, the Burrows group asked for a longer break—which is not supposed to happen; votes come right after one another to avoid dealmaking and undue pressure. Three hours later they still hadn’t come back. They had tried to break quorum. The remaining members easily elected David Cook. But simultaneously Burrows announced that he had the votes and would be the new speaker. He claimed to have all the Democrat votes plus enough Republicans to put him over the top.

Rep. Burrows, Phelan's choice as the House Speaker,
combined with Democrats and a relatively small
contingent of Republicans to claim he had the votes
to be the next Speaker. He is not conservative, and
he is not the choice of the House Republican Caucus.
Image from his House website.

He had the hubris to put out a list, and almost immediately eight on that list declared that they were not voting for Burrows and had not given him their endorsement. Even some Democrats said that; they had other Democrat choices, so why would they vote for a Republican? And a few were on both the Burrows and Cook lists, so their allegiance was unclear.

What we were seeing was the backroom deal that they’d done clandestinely in the past, but now, maybe because of desperation, they were doing it brazenly and openly. A raw push for power. In this case, even without the actual votes, they seemed to think, if they said it, people would cave, because that had always worked in the past.

Over the next day or so, pressure came on those who were on the Burrows list, or both lists. Here in Harris County, we saw Mano De Ayala and Sam Harless declare for Cook (although Mano’s was rather tepid, sort of a “well, that’s the rule, so I’ll abide by it”). The only holdout in the county is my representative, Lacey Hull.

Lacey Hull, and contact info, from her House website

She fell in with the Phelan swamp almost the moment she got elected in 2020, which was a disappointment. She had talked the conservative talk in her campaign. She’s a pleasant personality, and I still find her open and willing to talk about our important issues (not that this is a common occurrence, but I met with her in her office before the 2023 session, and I see her at occasional political events that precinct chairs go to). On a few issues she even works on with enthusiasm. But there are other things she’s just been weak on, for reasons that are hard to explain, other than the swamp milieu. She voted for the AG Ken Paxton impeachment—because the allegations were serious, but not because the evidence had been brought in that two-day sham hearing sprung on everybody at the end of session in 2023. It’s hard to dismiss that.

She was primaried both in 2022 and 2024. But there’s power in incumbency. I supported an opponent in 2022, and Hull nevertheless treated me as though she was unaware of that, which was helpful. In 2024 I didn’t feel good about her opponent, so, with misgivings, I voted for Lacey Hull. I had ended up campaigning for precinct chair at the early voting location where Lacey’s mother was campaigning for Lacey, and her mother is as pleasant to be around as she is. It’s hard not to like Lacey Hull. But I continue to be disappointed that she didn’t turn out to be the solid conservative we thought we were electing. (There are personal scandals people talk about; I haven’t ever talked about them with her, but my assumption is they’re true, unfortunately. It means less support for family values.)

So, how do we persuade a person to do the right thing? It has to be by convincing them it’s in their best interest.

I don’t know what she was getting, exactly, from Phelan and his minions. But maybe if she realized what support she would get by standing up for conservative causes, she wouldn’t miss having to do shady deals with the devil. Maybe she could actually convert to being a conservative bright star. I think that would be a great outcome. We could have a successful conservative session—unblocked by RINO obstructionists—and we’d be happy to let her take credit for that in her next campaign.

The precinct chairs in the entire County have been putting pressure on our representatives. Last Monday, the Harris County Republican Party passed a resolution calling for all the Republicans in the County to follow the Caucus rules and vote with the Caucus for David Cook.

With Lacey Hull now as the last holdout in the County, all the pressure will now be aimed at her. The precinct chairs in her district (me included) are sending out a resolution—a statement letting her know that we expect her to abide by Caucus rules, and will be sending that to media as well. Statewide, the County Republican Chairs have all signed resolutions pressuring the 26 or so holdouts. President-elect Trump has tweeted about the Texas Speaker race—and he’s on the conservative side with us.

Meanwhile, I’ve been getting campaign texts galore from Burrows—describing Cook as a RINO and claiming to be the conservative who fights for Governor Abbott’s conservative agenda, which Burrows literally stonewalled last session. The lies are blatant. They’re asking people in the districts on Burrows’ list to contact their representative and tell them to support the “conservative,” Burrows, for Speaker.

This is a screenshot from a text sent
to my phone on December 10. This is 
a blatant lie. Cook didn't solicit support
from the Democrats; Burrows literally
and openly did that. This text was linked
to something called redgop.vote.

This pro-Burrows text also came to my phone
on December 10. And this is also a lie:
Burrows deliberately thwarted conservative bills
in the last session. And Burrows is certainly
not "the most conservative member
of the Texas House." The text was signed
"Paul, The American Opportunity PAC"

We thought the ubiquitous campaign texts were coming to an end, after the November election. This isn’t even a campaign the people can vote on; all they can do is let their representatives know their opinions. And, unless you’re paying attention to something like this—during the post-election, Christmas season—you might believe you’re doing the right thing to tell your representative to vote for the conservative, but just have the wrong name attached. These aren’t coming to the neighboring districts, by the way. Just to the ones Burrows doesn’t want to lose, or maybe some he thinks he can gain back.

It's not going to work. We’re determined to get a conservative Speaker this time. “Be not weary in well doing,” right? But I the need to fight for conservatism in Texas is relentless.

Giving Thanks

I year ago, around Thanksgiving time, I wrote about covenants. Glenn Beck had challenged his listeners to read and sign a covenant with God, to restore God’s favor upon our land. I don’t know how many signers he got (or even if there was a way to count and then publish the number; we did it, but I don’t recall there being a way to tell Glenn Beck). And we didn’t hear much about it after that.

The Mayflower Compact was the first covenant,
or contract between the people and God,
for people settling this country, image from here.

The following year was pretty dedicated to the presidential election—and other elections. (I had to run in my Primary as a precinct chair, back in February; I’d never had a challenger before.) There’s always so much to do. And it’s about persuading people to a point of view.

But the important thing to persuade people to is to live the laws of God. Even if they can’t quite believe in the One True God, if they nevertheless live as though they believed, that seems to be enough.

Back in the days when Abraham rescued his nephew Lot from the wicked cities of Sodom just before its destruction, the Lord had been willing to spare the city if Abraham could find 50 righteous souls, or even just 45, or 40, or 30, or 20, or 10. But Abraham couldn't find 10. Lot’s immediate family—which seemed to consist of Lot and his wife and a couple of daughters, not any married children—was all they could find, so there was no saving the city. And when Lot’s wife looked back, she wasn’t saved either.

When Jonah preached to Ninevah, the people repented, and were spared in that generation (I think they were taken out something like a century later).

The Lord is merciful. If He has given us warnings, and we heed them, the likelihood is the bad consequences do not follow.

So I’ve been waiting all year to find out if our humble turning back to God as a people was enough. We can of course do this individually—and we must. But as a people it depends on enough people doing it, probably people who weren’t doing it before, which is why we were ripening for destruction. And, as people in a proselytizing church know, sharing the gospel—even sharing the joy that it brings to our lives—is typically not that persuasive to people whose habits are foreign to showing love to God.

But we had reason to hope. One thing I kept seeing pop up in memes was this quoted scripture:

2 Chronicles 7:14

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

If enough of us committed to live in covenant with Jesus Christ, the Lord would protect and heal our land.

I saw several calls to prayer, especially that final week. Here was one:

Found on Facebook; I couldn't find the originator.

We had a majority of voters reject a campaign of “abortion” and “he’s literally Hitler and all his voters are fascists, racists, etc…”

The land looks like this, by states.

Final electoral college map, from Real Clear Politics,
found on Facebook here

It looks like this, by county.

County results, map found here

The blue spots correspond pretty closely to where cities are. I saw stats saying that 86.72% of American land is “red,” while 13.28% is “blue.” One of those few blue counties in Texas is mine, Harris County. But, while we’ve been pretty blue since 2018, this election Trump cut his deficit in half, and we won appellate court judges and several district court judges. We’re trending toward red, so right now you’d call it purple. I’m not sure about the data in Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio, but there’s an awful lot of red country between those big cities.

Even California moved red. Here’s the comparison of counties 2020 to 2024:

Graphic found as screenshot from this video

Granted, neither party is pure. You can't simply say red is made up of good people and blue is made up of bad people. But it is also true that one of the parties pushed a lot of anti-freedom policies, in our real lives, over the past four years—and pushed for babies to be killed in the womb as a major issue. And they called those of us evil who didn’t go along with them. So it's a relatively accurate depiction for our purposes.

It comes down to what people were thinking in their hearts as they declared their sides. And if that was to move all of us toward God, then we can call this win God’s merciful hand preserving us. He wants us to have liberty—and the prosperity and civilization that go with that.

There’s a scripture verse that kept coming to my attention this week. This is in the book of Ether, about a people long since destroyed, whose destruction had come because of the evil cabal, the secret murderous combinations to get power and gain, and the editor of the pages, many hundred years later than their destruction, gives us a warning for our day. It’s all important, but I highlighted a few sentences that strike me as pertinent for us, in this country, right now.

Ether 8:23-26

23 Wherefore, O ye Gentiles, it is wisdom in God that these things should be shown unto you, that thereby ye may repent of your sins, and suffer not that these murderous combinations shall get above you, which are built up to get power and gain—and the work, yea, even the work of destruction come upon you, yea, even the sword of the justice of the Eternal God shall fall upon you, to your overthrow and destruction if ye shall suffer these things to be.

24 Wherefore, the Lord commandeth you, when ye shall see these things come among you that ye shall awake to a sense of your awful situation, because of this secret combination which shall be among you; or wo be unto it, because of the blood of them who have been slain; for they cry from the dust for vengeance upon it, and also upon those who built it up.

25 For it cometh to pass that whoso buildeth it up seeketh to overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries; and it bringeth to pass to the destruction of all people, for it is built up by the devil, who is the father of all lies; even that same liar who beguiled our first parents, yea, even that same liar who hath caused man to commit murder from the beginning; who hath hardened the hearts of men that they have murdered the prophets, and stoned them, and cast them out form the beginning.

26 Wherefore, I, Moroni, am commanded to write these things that evil may be done away, and that the time may come that Satan may have no power upon the hearts of the children of men, but that they may be persuaded to do good continually, that they may come unto the fountain of all righteousness and be saved.

Screenshot from this video

Most of this is warning, but in that first verse and the last we’re told that these things are to persuade us so we will choose righteousness. There’s a warning, but also the hope that we will heed it and avoid the bad stuff that could happen.

What if this election was our way of “not suffering these things” to be among us any longer? What if the calls to “drain the swamp” and root out the Deep State are exactly what this scripture warned us we needed to do? This may mean that the Destroying Angel passes over us, as it did the children of Israel in the days of Moses—because there were enough of us living in covenant with the Lord Jesus Christ that we are spared from the destruction that looked so imminent, had things gone the other way.

I’m thankful that a majority of voters rejected the secret combinations, the evil of tyranny with abortion as its sacrificial right (and rite).

I’m thankful that Donald Trump was preserved from assassination. I pray that he will surround himself with wise and good people who will do the Lord’s will in this country.

I’m thankful for the reprieve from destruction.

There’s plenty to be thankful for this year.

I’m thankful for those who have shared their humor with us through the hard times, and I expect will keep doing so through good times. Here are a sampling.

from a Facebook story, appears to originate with Eric Moutsos

from an ad on Facebook from MAGA.com

a Blaze Media ad, product sold here

The Babylon Bee (satirical site) offers, for Republicans 10 things to be thankful for, at least one or two of which might give you a chuckle. And another 10 things for Democrats.

It looks like this could be a good holiday season—with plenty of reasons to give thanks and rejoice in our Savior—followed by a new, very hopeful year, for all those who live in covenant with God, and for all those who may be saved from destruction along with us.

The Ship Isn’t Going to Sink After All

I don’t expect this to be read by many people who need to hear this, but things are not as bad as you fear. Watch and wait. You’ll see. If you’re not ready to hear this yet, OK; maybe we’ll come back to it when you’re ready. I’ll just leave it here.

The ship will not sink after all.

I’m talking to those who aren’t celebrating after last week’s election—or maybe I’m talking to those who care about those who are not celebrating.

Here are a couple of examples. This first one, I like the person who posted. I think she’s a good mom and generally a good person. But I do not engage her on political issues. She reports having this uncomfortable conversation—which she believes should not be something she should have ever had to anticipate, let alone face—with her tween-age daughter. She assured her daughter that she and her husband would keep the children safe. They didn’t need to worry about the outcome of an election. The daughter then said, “Well, they don’t like childless cat ladies. I NEVER want to have kids, and I like cats. So, I guess they don’t want me here [in America]. And if they don’t want me here, fine—I will leave.”

This mom says they do not speak of politics around the house. The girl picked it up, essentially, from the milieu. The mom explains this burden “we” have put on her and her daughter, and ends with, “The coming generations will hold us accountable for what we do today, and if we are conveying that they don’t matter, that they cannot have a voice or live their lives in the abundantly free country many of us grew up in, they will abandon a country that their parents and grandparents forced them to suffocate in.”

By comparison to others, this was relatively mild. For example,

meme found on a Facebook here

I’m OK with history judging me on this vote, by the way, since I have neither those lacks nor those bad character traits.

And this one:

[Someone at] church told me my son would be deported, because he was born when I lived overseas, and that I’d be deported with him [4 laugh/crying emojis] all because [someone on TV] ran her mouth about nonsense. These oldhead liberals at church crack me up.

One more: This is from a HuffPost article called, “My Husband and His Family Voted for Trump, So I’m Canceling Thanksgiving and Christmas,” which then goes on to explain to the husband,

I am sorry about the holidays, but I cannot bite my tongue like I did with Hillary. I don’t want to disrespect your parents or your brother and his family in their home, or our home, so it’s best this way. No scenes. You can go see them. Seriously—I will not be in a room of 15 people who voted for Trump.

What a relief for the other 15 people!

We are not dealing with rational people right now. Just for clarity, J.D. Vance never said we should deport, or ignore, or “cancel” childless cat ladies; he said people with no children, and therefore no stake in the future of the country, should not be overrepresented in leadership positions. And he said it as an offhand remark in 2021 in an interview with Tucker Carlson. (Read more at your trusted NPR source here). It got dredged up by the Harris campaign, and taken out of context, to foment anger, which apparently worked on the demographic they aimed for—those who were already voting for her. The milieu in my home would not have caused such distress on a pre-teen girl, but then, our milieu is really very different—the sources for news, entertainment, conversation topics, etc. I think I wouldn’t have started the conversation with, “Don’t worry about the outcome of the election; we’ll protect you,” and then blamed the rest of us for the daughter’s distress.

As for the church person telling a US citizen that they’d be deported along with their child for allowing their child to be born while they were temporarily living outside US boundaries is so laughably ill-informed, I almost shouldn’t dignify it with the explanation, but children born to US citizens are considered US citizens, regardless of where they are born. Otherwise, you couldn’t get service members in their child-bearing years to live abroad with their families. Nor would ambassadors or even US workers in international companies. So, “oldhead liberals at church,” get a grip.

We—the majority of the country who are Trump voters—are, for the sake of love of country and our fellow Americans, being patient during this mourning process. We have been in that place of overwhelming loss, with a great deal more good reason.

Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein, screenshot from here

Bret Weinstein and wife Heather Heying did a thoughtful podcast a few days after the election.  They come from a liberal background—up until “the science” was so obviously wrong, in 2020 and beyond concerning the pandemic, that they felt they had to speak up. And for that, even though she had been voted favorite professor at Evergreen College in the northwest, they were both fired for speaking the truth about actual data. So, yes, they were red pilled, and in this election strongly supported Trump. But they also remain close to a sizable number of people who cling to the left (bitter clingers?)

Bret Weinstein uses a metaphor of a ship that is being badly captained, in such a way that the ship is going to go down, along with everyone aboard. So there’s an honorable mutiny—the capable sailors come forward and restrain the captain and take over. There are also sailors who do not mutiny, who stay loyal to the captain no matter what. They’re angry with those who stepped in and changed the sails and set the ship aright. In fact, they insist the captain is saving them and these sailors stepping up to make the necessary changes are going to kill them all. Those angry ones are wrong, but they will nevertheless benefit from the lifesaving actions of those who took over.

Metaphors always have limits. The American voters are not mutineers nor insurrectionists; they abided by the law and used their vote for a peaceful transition of power. There is, nevertheless, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who insist these pro-American voters are killing democracy and inflicting us all with fascism. But they are wrong, fortunately.

Weinstein offers a main point, which maybe will help us move forward: we all want the ship to stay afloat.

I think the irony of the moment is you have something like half the population convinced that something terrible has just happened. And that half the population, I think, does not appreciate that, actually, the terrible thing was already well underway. We were living under what was at least a turnkey totalitarian state in which, actually, the key had begun to be turned, and we had all sorts of examples of political prisoners, of lawfare being wielded, people being disenfranchised, borders being open for cynical reasons that we can't know, the costs were accumulating for the insane captain's perspective on how the civilization—or the ship, in this case—was to be run.

And so, at some level, the fact that you believe that something terrible has happened in this mutiny doesn't mean your life wasn't just saved by the mutineers. You may not get that. But we should all be able to agree that we are bound together, and that what we need is for the ship to be well governed. And what we disagree over is which of these prospects was the terrifying one.

I may disagree with him slightly here; I think there are some, in power positions, who were rooting for the malaise and eventual demise of our beloved constitutional republic—for the ship to sink, as it were. But most of the people have been what Stalin (or was it Lenin?) called “useful idiots.” They believe what they’re told by the tyrannical state, without question, and they act accordingly.

I continue to puzzle over why they believe what they’re told, without questioning. They even seem to see a different reality from actual, provable reality. Some of it must be the sources they use for information. In fact, that must be a lot of it. But some of it must be choosing to believe what they believe, against the evidence.

As Mark Twain said, “How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!”

I am, of course, working under the assumption that reality as I see it is close to the actual reality. I aim for that, anyway.

A day or so before the election, Chris Martenson put out a short Peak Prosperity video. He began with a clip of Oprah saying, “We don't get to sit this one out. If we don't show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.”

Chris Martenson, upper right, shows clip of Oprah,
screenshot from here

Martenson then said, “I agree. Just, we have— It's just amazing how fundamentally different we are.” We thought it was entirely possible that, had Harris won, the totalitarian state would have moved so far down, we might never have seen a way out of the tyranny. Seriously. Martenson pointed out that this administration oversaw shadow banning and actual banning, censorship—so much that it filtered down to regular people on Facebook. (My BIL had his post taken down when he told his own personal experience with COVID and the eventual treatment—which included hydroxychloroquine. Several Facebook friends had posts removed and were put on some sort of time out or probation they call Facebook jail. Many of us, including me, had those ubiquitous misinformation warnings placed under our posts.)

In the Weinstein video, they put out some of what we faced. A January 2022 report shows what people from the two parties believed should happen:

·        Find/identify the unvaxxed.

o   20% REP             55% DEM

·        Unvaccinated should be locked in homes.

o   20% REP             60% DEM

·        Unvaccinated should be sent to quarantine camps

o   20% REP (way too high)               40% DEM

·        Take children from unvaccinated parents.

o   Near 0% REP                    30% DEM

·        Imprison critics of the vaccine.

o   10% REP             50% DEM

This is not to say these things happened in the US; they didn’t. But Democrats wanted them to at much higher rates than Republicans. There were, however, actual CDC plans to carry them out. The day Weinstein and Heying recorded the video, they noticed a piece by Jeffrey Tucker, of the Brownstone Institute, saying that the CDC had plans built for quarantine camps, which plans remained on the CDC site until 2023. Tucker says this was called “interim operational considerations for implementing the shielding approach to prevent COVID-19 infections in humanitarian settings,” in case you didn’t get terrified enough by this year’s Halloween.

The Blaze put out a piece in their Lifestyle section called “Every Lie They Told You about Trump: A Brief Overview.”  It’s way too brief to touch on “every lie,” but I’ll let you explore that one on your own.

Tom Woods, in his email from Thursday (November 14), quoted Dave Smith, who reminds us of this story from eight years ago:

The US intelligence agencies framed the sitting US President for treason. They all knew that Donald Trump wasn’t involved in a conspiracy with the Russians, but they lied.

Well, that President is back AND the boss of the Intelligence agencies is now, not only someone completely outside of that conspiracy, but someone who was slandered with that same accusation, by the same nasty woman whose campaign came up with the whole Trump frame job to begin with.

It turns out there are people who should fear a Trump presidency—not because he’ll be a tyrannical dictator; clearly they weren’t afraid of tyranny (or "loss of our democracy," as they put it), as long as they were the tyrants. But they should fear that Trump will hold them legally and lawfully accountable for their actions. They will call any such legal actions the political retributions of an authoritarian dictator, but the myriad of Trump voters know what it really is.

Weinstein brought back the ship analogy an hour further into the podcast. It had taken some bravery to stand up publicly as they had, along with many others. He says,

If we had failed, we would have been made to walk the plank, and the ship would have gone down somewhat later. There was no escape. And this is why I think so many people took what they at least perceived to be such risks with their own personal well-being, was that we didn't have a choice, right? We really believed—and I still believe—that the other outcome was utterly intolerable, and that this was probably our last shot to gain control of the helm and steer the ship back on a reasonable course.

But I was imagining the ship, if the other outcome had happened, the ship would go down, and a lot of people would be scratching their heads at the last moments as to whether the mutineers might have been onto something, which is a—that's a terrible screenplay I don't want to live.

The Constitution had been hanging by a thread. The repair is going to feel kind of severe and crazy for a while. Coming to know the truth will help with the healing; it really will.

image from a Christian Homestead video

I put a new book on my reading list: Political Ponerology: The Science of Evi, Psychopathy, and the Origins of Totalitarianism. In a recommendation of this book, David Solway, for PJ Media says, 

In effect, you cannot change a mind that was never properly formed or classically educated or a mind devoid of any vestige of common sense or practical smarts. A coalition of conservative thinkers and ordinary working families constitutes a winning combination.

For those who eventually find your way here at a time when you have become open to it, I suggest adding a full list of conservative thinkers to your content providers. Check out Epoch Times, The Blaze, The Daily Wire, PJ Media, Tucker Carlson—just for starters. And check out free Hillsdale courses, particularly Constitution 101. And then have some open-minded discussions with those 15 people who voted for Trump who are at your holiday table (maybe you’ll be ready for this step next year). Maybe you will unlearn some of the untruths that have been making you so panicked/angry/over-emotional, miserable, and miserable to be around.

And, once you’re ready to add some levity back into your life, use the Babylon Bee as your news source; while they are a satire site, they do hit on the truth more accurately than the sources that led you astray before. And if you don’t understand the satire, well, that will put you on a journey toward truth too.

image from a Babylon Bee story on Facebook

One more Weinstein quote, about how the rest of us are feeling right now:

I just want to try to just capture the fact that something took place that I think all of the people, whose names you know, who took a risk on this were feeling, simultaneously, the day after, and it was not vitriolic; it was not angry; it was not any of the things that you might imagine; it was this feeling of “I can't believe that I feel hopeful. And I can't remember how long I've been living under this feeling of pressure, that we cannot afford to lose, because we are in the bullseye.”

I’m sorry there are people feeling lost and afraid the ship is sinking. But it’s not. And those of us who had witnessed the peril, we just feel so relieved. And we’re ready to help right the ship and sail forward.

Bonus: three lists (with some repetition) of progress in President-elect Trump's first week:

found on Facebook, here

 A facebook story, original credited to
@the_typical_liberal and dc_draino

found on Facebook here

Get Used to Living in Zion

I don’t mean for the title to be misleading. I am not referring to Zionism—the movement of Jews to a homeland of Israel. The word Zion is used in a lot of ways in our scriptures (the standard canonized scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). I’m picking out a few that will apply to what I’m writing about today: “the pure in heart,” “the cause of Zion,” and in the geographical sense somewhat, “all of North and South America.”

from the Bible Dictionary, here

To lay the groundwork: I wrote a couple of months ago (toward the bottom of this post) about the 42 months during which “the beast” reigned over the saints. And I speculated that these 42 months could coincide with the likely illegal administration of Joe Biden, or whoever was pulling the strings during his administration. As it turned out, he stepped down from the race for reelection exactly 42 months after his inauguration.

I just called the Biden administration illegal. While I'm not
writing about that today, this new graphic is additional evidence.
Found here and here.

So, in that sense, “the saints” were the good people of America who were living under the tyranny of “the beast”; i.e., the sea beast of Revelation 13, or the worldwide cabal, secret combinations, worldwide Deep State, Whore of All the Earth, or whatever symbolic name you want to apply to that entity. I posited that, with the conclusion of those 42 months, the beast would still be dangerous, in its death throes, but would be losing power. And then last week I wrote about the propaganda beast—the land beast of Revelation 13, which supports and gives the illusion of power to the sea beast—that it was losing power also.

And then we see the election. The sea beast is significantly disempowered by the election of Donald Trump to a second term.

I have been looking toward this election all year, trying to imagine what would happen going forward from the election, depending on various outcome scenarios. I couldn’t see beyond it. If the cabal won, America was essentially doomed. But I was hopeful that wouldn’t be the case—because of what I was seeing symbolically. But if Trump won, wouldn’t the sea beast and the propaganda beast stir up a lot of trouble, maybe riots or violence? I didn’t know. I couldn’t imagine that they would concede peacefully and allow the incoming administration to uncover all their secret works of darkness. I still can’t see them allowing that. And yet, at this point, two days after the historic landslide election, the results are so clear that accusations of cheating to get this result are meaningless. So protests have no basis of complaint.

In fact, the losing side, rather than self-reflection, is saying things like, “America is more fascist than we had realized.”

For those who feel sad that their team lost this election, I’m not without sympathy. I remember consoling myself with Philippians 4:8 after the 2012 election: “whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” Thinking on the demise of the country was too devastating to contemplate. I was in mourning. Turning to lovely things (like Christmas music) helped me get through. Essentially, I turned to God for comfort, as I do, and life went on. I suggest the same for those mourning today, but I’m guessing that’s not their natural go-to.

It turned out reports of the demise of our constitutional republic were premature. We had some temporary improvement from 2017-2020. Then we’ve been hanging on by a thread, as it were, on limited life support. America might now be waking up from its near-death coma.

But those voters who have listened to the propaganda, that has been telling them a Trump victory was the end of life as we know it, and the beginning of fascist tyranny (which they didn’t recognize under Biden) are mourning what they think is a serious blow. In a year or two, many of them may come to realize, hey, things aren’t as bad as we were told. This may especially be the case if the propaganda beast is indeed weakening. They may start getting information from sources of truth, and that could make all the difference for them.

So what do I mean about getting used to living in Zion?

Maybe "shining city upon a hill" is another way of 
describing a Zion society, and it can be America.
Gif image found here

We are told to prepare the world for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, our Savior. We know this is coming. We don’t know precisely when. But soon—whatever soon means.

There’s so much to fear about the run-up to the Second Coming: earthquakes, fires, floods, famine, disease, wars. All of which we have seen, in case you hadn’t noticed. To those who keep saying, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” maybe what we have been seeing has been something.

I have wondered a couple of things. First, why the warnings from ancient prophets if there is no way to avoid the tribulations? And second, how are we to prepare the world for the Savior to come and live among us, if we’re too hampered by tyranny to make free choices to benefit ourselves and others?

I expect the tribulations will continue. But with each one, there will be people who turn to God for support in those times. And—this is important—they will find Zion. They will find people living in a way that shows their love for one another. People step up to help those in trouble, and to get them to more spiritually solid ground—as well as housed and fed and comforted until they can become self-sufficient again.

During the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, we saw glimpses of Zion—people stepping up to help those in need. These Zion people sometimes had to do it despite being hindered by the government.

Elon Musk provided Starlink service to people who had lost their communications. But they weren’t allowed into some areas—the areas with the most need—without names and contact information of the people they were going to see. Well, it kind of defeats the purpose of going in to reach those people who can’t tell you who they are—because they have no communications to let you know who they are!

Glenn Beck experienced frustration with FEMA and other government agencies, who were following directions, but hadn’t thought of ways to actually get food and water and supplies to the people who couldn’t get to their in-town centers—because they lost transportation, bridges, and roads, and couldn’t get to those places. People had to do the jobs that government couldn’t or wouldn’t do.

And, even without natural disasters, people are struggling to pay for groceries and gas for their cars. These things were called “malaise” under Obama (as with Carter a generation earlier), and were considered permanent. Then we found out they weren’t permanent; we just needed better policies. So we had better days under Trump—until the pandemic allowed the sea beast to exert control over the people in ways that were more frightening than the illness (which was easily treatable at home, if they hadn’t outlawed such treatments). Then things turned bad again under Biden. But now we know those things don’t have to be permanent.

It will take some work to build Zion. But I think we can actually do it.

Another way of talking about this is building civilization, which I’ve written about. On the Spherical Model website, I describe civilization this way:

The Social Sphere of the Spherical Model

What Does Civilization Look Like?

In the northern circle that is the goal—Civilization—families typically remain intact, and children are raised in loving homes, with caring parents who guide their education and training, dedicating somewhere between 18 and 25 years for that child to reach adulthood, and who then remain interested in their children’s success for the rest of their lives.

Civilized people live peaceably among their neighbors, helping rather than taking advantage of one another, abiding by laws enacted to protect property and safety—with honesty and honor. Civilized people live in peace with other civilized people; countries and cultures coexist in appreciation, without fear.

There is a thriving free-enterprise economy. Poverty is meaningless; even though there will always be a lowest earning 10% defined as poor, in a civilized society these lowest earners have comfortable shelter and adequate food and clothing—and there’s the possibility of rising, or at least for future generations to rise.

Creativity abounds; enlightening arts and literature exceed expectations. Architecture and infrastructure improve; innovation and invention are the rule.

People feel free to choose their work, their home, their family practices, their friendships and associations. And they generally self-restrain before they infringe on the rights and freedoms of others. Where there are questions about those limits, laws are in place to help clarify boundaries of civilized behavior. When someone willingly infringes on the rights or safety of another, the law functions to protect that victim as well as society from further uncivilized behavior from the offender.

America is set up to be such a civilization—to be a Zion.

The losing candidate, if you’ll recall, declared herself against Zion. It was at a rally shortly before the election. She was praising her favorite “right” of abortion, and two people in the crowd called out “Jesus is Lord” and “Christ is King.” And she went off script—one of the only times—and quipped, “You’re at the wrong rally. You must want the smaller rally down the street.” She is anti-Zion, anti-civilization—she is anti-Christ.

So how do we get to become Zion? We follow the rules for civilization. Again, this is from the Civilization article on the website. There are two rules:

1.     Not all religious societies are civilized (according to my definition), but every civilized society is a religious society. This absolutely does not mean state-sponsored religion or lack of religious freedom; in fact, the opposite is true. Freedom of religion is essential, and the flourishing of religion in general must be encouraged.

2.     The family is the basic unit of civilized society. Whatever threatens the family threatens civilization. So preserving and protecting the family is paramount in laws and social expectations in a civilized society.

 

There’s a fair amount more detail for each of these, which we won’t fully cover here today. For those of my faith, you might look at this as moving from savagery a telestial society (telestial referring to the brightness of the stars at a distance), which is a fallen world, to a civilized, terrestrial world (referring to the relative brightness of the moon, which is much brighter in the sky than a star). If we can get portions of the world—maybe even whole countries, but at least many communities—to be of that higher level, that would be a place Christ would visit. We want to eventually become celestial (comparative brightness of the sun)—where God dwells. But that can come later. Terrestrial, as I understand it, will be the nature of the world during Christ’s millennial reign.

The Ten Commandments, at
the Texas State Capitol

How do we become terrestrial—or civilized—now, while the world itself is still telestial? By living by those two rules. The kind of religion may still vary widely. But it will require being accountable to a higher being for your behavior in this life. And it will require living a certain way. We need to live by the Ten Commandments. We can summarize these with these five things: Honor God, family, life, truth, and property.

·        We honor God: We put God first, and recognize our adherence to His law will affect our afterlife beyond this life.

·        We honor family: We have family loyalty and fidelity. This requires, by the way, no sex outside of man-woman marriage—no arguments about that. Family is how civilization gets passed from generation to generation. Family, as defined by God, is the basic unit of civilization.

·        We value life: We value our own life and the lives of all others. We would take human life only in self-defense situations, which includes defensive war, and in protection of society from someone who has murdered. In a just, civilized society, those exceptions become more and more rare.

·        We value truth: We do not lie, or bear false witness; truth is sacred to us.

·        We value property: We do not steal or even covet, which means wanting what belongs to another—not just wanting something like theirs, but actually wanting to deprive them for your own satisfaction.

The only thing not specified there to love your neighbor. The Savior summarized all the law and the prophets (the sum of what became Old Testament scripture outlining the law and then the teachings of the prophets) as to love the Lord with all your heart, mind, and strength, and then to love your neighbor as yourself.

His is an even higher way—which we’ll have an easier time choosing from a terrestrial (civilized) society than from a telestial (savage) society. He asks us to control even our thoughts and feelings. There are summaries of what this behavior entails in places like I Corinthians 13, where the apostle Paul describes charity, the pure love of Christ: kind, not envious, not self-important or self-aggrandizing, not unseemly, not selfish, not easily provoked, no evil thinking, no rejoicing in iniquity, but rejoicing in truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things. This love never fails.

A government leader can’t make such a society happen. But such a leader can get out of the way of a free and righteous people. If we return to our Constitution, and limit government to those specified things that protect our life, liberty, and property, the rest is up to us.

Maybe this was the plan all along—to give an example of Zion to the world. Then people can self-select based on whether they love God or not. Those who choose Zion get to live a much better life—more like living in the Garden of Eden eventually—than those who choose symbolic Babylon, or the savage, telestial world.

As Trump might eventually say: “Come to Zion—but do it legally.”

There’s more celebration of the victory I’d like to write about, for the sake of history. But this will do as my first impression.