Month: November 2019

This Thanksgiving

America, Family, Society & Culture

A week from today our family will be gathered together at our house to celebrate Thanksgiving. In chaotic times such as these there are two ways the gathering can go: either we’ll all use the occasion to whine and vent our frustrations or we’ll compartmentalize them out and reflect on the half-full cup. I’m hoping the latter will prevail.

Today’s Wall Street Journal had an article that I’ve clipped and will share with our family this year, and every year going forward. It’s entitled “When the Next Generation Has to Step Up on Thanksgiving”. It focuses on the baton-handoff that must occur as the family patriarch and matriarch age and are unable to host and manage the mayhem that always attends the holiday. But it also offers wisdom for every Thanksgiving. If followed, the chances of having the half-full cup scenario has a good chance of materializing. I highly recommend the article.

As for giving thanks and gratitude. Today I’m going to share a personal anecdote describing a seminal moment in my upbringing.  It informs what Thanksgiving means to me.

THE CAIRO INCIDENT

In 1967 (I was 15) my Mom and Dad and I took a trip to Greece and the Middle East. It was on our stop in Cairo that I had an experience that was one of those “I’ll never forget” moments that shapes a life.

We were walking out of the Nile Hilton hotel where we were staying. As we exited the doors onto the sidewalk a group of kids, 5 or 6 as I recall, came up to us begging for food or money. Ragtag, dirty, with pleading eyes, the group included a couple of teenagers.

This was the first time in my life I had ever been solicited by someone my own age. I had seen plenty of panhandlers before in Paris, in New York and elsewhere, and groups of little kids swarming around tourists, but never before had I experienced direct eye contact with kids my own size and age.

I expected my father, a veteran traveler and tourist who had been subjected to similar circumstances countless times during his worldwide travels, to simply keep walking. Instead, he turned back to the doorman of the hotel, handed him some money and asked him to personally ensure that these kids were fed a proper meal. The doorman, shocked and hesitant, reluctantly promised he would. As my dad turned to the group he pointed to the doorman, who explained to them what he was going to do. One of the teenage boys then turned not to my father, but to me, clasped his hands in prayer-like fashion, nodded his head and uttered in Arabic “Shukran” or “Thank You”, then put his arm around his little brother, who did the same. Later when we returned the doorman recounted how he had sent to the hotel kitchen for “guest lunchboxes” and distributed them to the children.

Irrespective of whether or not these kids were putting on an act, I was so taken aback and moved by the incredibly sharp contrast between my life and theirs that I vowed never again to complain about the food on my plate or the comforts I enjoy.

And so to this day, and for the rest of my life, I will be grateful for the privilege and opportunity of living in freedom in this greatest of all countries and for the incredible wealth we have: to include the feast of food, family and friends at Thanksgiving.

Techno-Intrusion

Religion, Society & Culture, Technology

The intrusion of technology in our lives is rapidly becoming domination. The abrogation of humanity to artificial intelligence (emphasis on “artificial”) is real and advancing rapidly.

It is alarming how much our society has become enslaved by the little screen in our hands. And I do mean enslaved. It’s no longer FOMO (the Fear of Missing Out). It’s that for some, even many, every moment of every day is monitored, organized (or disorganized), influenced or controlled by technology. It’s as if we’ve outsourced our critical thinking abilities, self-control, conduct governors, interpersonal communications, hell, our consciousness. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that some have outsourced their SOULS.

I don’t need an “app” to monitor how much I sleep at night. I don’t need to be fed “relevant” advertising when I visit a website. I don’t want “free” stuff. The price of “free” is relinquishing personal data to an amorphous algorithm that creates a digital profile of me. That profile is used (and manipulated) in all sorts of ways, the vast majority of which are driven by the pecuniary interests of the technology company that conjured up, sorted and sold my profile to anyone who would pay for it.

Technology has permeated, or infected, virtually every form of human communication. People facing one another, looking into each other’s eyes, interpreting body language, noting inflection, giving and taking non-verbal cues, interacting with one another in the moment…are behaviors increasingly, frighteningly, diminishing. And since communication, whether incoming or outgoing, is what I would call a basic component of humanity, we are as a result becoming less and less human.

What matters is increasingly lost. Virtue is not even a word or concept in the social vocabulary – it’s an anachronism, out-of-place with life at the speed of text or email traffic. Home and hearth are Hallmark Channel themes. The importance of Family, of doing what’s right, of eschewing wrong, of telling the truth, of adhering to your word, of working hard for an honest day’s wage, of being kind, of self-discipline, of moderation, of humility, of courage, of what used to be common morality…all are for the most part either banned from the new social ether or are relegated to being quaint ideas from the past.

God doesn’t use an iPhone. Many who are tethered to them don’t believe in God anyway. Faith, a moral compass, yardsticks of right and wrong…all have succumbed to technology. Religion is thus also a casualty of technological so-called “progress”.

I admit that I too have been caught by the groundswell. Rather than stick my head out the door to decide what jacket or coat I’ll wear today, I quickly tap my Accuweather app to learn what the temperature is and whether it’ll become warmer or colder. Rather than pick up the phone and call my daughter to ask about some detail of the upcoming grandchild’s birthday party, I send her a text.

Some courageous (and seemingly more happy and content) members of my generation have deliberately eschewed technology. One of my oldest friends still uses a flip phone, and he leaves it on his dresser with a dead battery most of the time. The guy who installed the sprinkler system on our lawn 35 years ago and still services it today doesn’t use email. He carries a cell phone but never answers it. I leave him voicemails but he doesn’t listen to them…he just calls me back when it’s convenient for him to do so.

At first I was annoyed that I couldn’t reach people who had largely disconnected from The Grid, but now I’m starting to appreciate the benefits of lowered blood pressure and appreciation of what IS important that accompanies doing so.

Little by little I hope the pendulum swing towards increasing technological domination of our lives and away from humanity will swing back. It’s happened before in world history. I can hope it will happen again and we’ll all be the better for it.

P.S. I just realized how hypocritical I am for using an iPad to write this post and throwing THESE thoughts out into the social ether as well. Sigh…

Nationalism vs. Globalism

America, Politics, Society & Culture, Values

On a Sunday morning sipping coffee and listening to some peaceful music rather than a blaring shout show on tv, I reflected on the Left’s banal vituperations against ‘nationalists’ and ‘nationalism’. As usual, they have hijacked words and language to warp meaning and seek to paint Traditionalists as negatively as possible.

Thomas Madison, in an article penned yesterday describing the interaction between presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard and ignorant hyper-hag Joy Behar on “The View”, described how Gabbard schooled Behar “on the definition of “nationalist,” a word synonymous with “patriot.”

Madison explained, “The term “white nationalist” has been hijacked by liberal Democrats, beginning in Charlottesville, where the anti-American left began its campaign to make the term synonymous with “white supremacist,” made clear by their continued talking point, citing “white nationalist” and “white supremacist,” in the same sentence. The narrative has been pushed by liberal liars from Barack Hussein to congressional Democrats to the partisan talking heads in the liberal mainstream media, so that today all leftists believe that a “white nationalist” is a “white supremacist” when actually, a white nationalist is a patriot who happens to be white. There are white nationalists, black nationalists, Asian nationalists, and Latino nationalists, American patriots all. But, let’s not allow the truth to interfere with a good liberal smear narrative.”

Nationalism, above all, refers to a belief that individuals and their communities, as well as the nation as a whole, must have sovereignty.[1] I often point out that one of the big differences between the people of England and the people of America is that in England The People are SUBJECTS. In America, The People are CITIZENS. Nationalism is a belief in self-governance by CITIZENS. It is a belief in freedom to set policies and enact laws for ourselves, not subject ourselves to laws made by elitist, often unelected bureaucrats in another country (e.g. Brussels and the European “Union”). The latter is a philosophy of the “Globalists”, an insidious scheme to force winners to provide for losers, to advance the Marxist philosophy: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

Nationalists oppose policies such as open borders, mass migration, and forming international organizations that have as their end goal one-world government. Nationalists thus also support policies such as building border walls and maintaining border security.

Nationalism, or Patriotism therefore, is a sense of pride in one’s country. It’s the father of the phrases “My country do or die” or “America: Love it or Leave It”. It’s what’s behind the chants of “U.S.A., U.S.A.” at rallies. It’s about citizens all over the country flying American flags on their houses. Of course the Left, wanting to “fundamentally transform” America, condemns these expressions and actions as sinister: xenophobic, racist, etc.

Globalism, on the other hand, refers to the authoritarian desire for a “one world” view that rejects the role of sovereign nations in protecting distinctive national values. Globalism is anti-American in encouraging Americans to adopt a “world view” rather than an “American view.” The ultimate goal of globalism is the eventual unification of humanity under a one-world government.

Globalists oppose nationalism, national sovereignty, and self-governance. Instead, they favor open borders, free trade, H-1B visas, interventionism, foreign aid, and changing the U.S. Constitution. They oppose strong border security and the building of border walls.

Leftists support globalism because it leads to centralized power, thereby providing them with an easier way to gain control. Leftists can more easily persuade a handful of people in centralized government to rule in their favor than convince everyone of their agenda in a decentralized form of government.

I recall saying to myself just before the 2016 election when I like so many other traditionalists expected Hillary to win, “Only a cataclysmic event like another 9-11 or a world war, God forbid, will force America to halt its slide down the slippery slope to ruin and turn back to traditional values that would allow us to begin the long and difficult climb back up”. The jury is still out but Trump may have been that cataclysmic event. His views on Nationalism and Patriotism, while crassly rather than inspiringly articulated, reflect what the majority of Americans, I believe, feel and believe about our country.

The shrill and cackling voice of the Left (e.g. Joy Behar) has so polluted the airwaves that it’s sometimes difficult to see the forest, but in my more hopeful moments I sense we might be nearing the bottom of the slippery slope and are poised to start the long climb back up.

[1] This discussion borrows heavily from https://www.conservapedia.com/Nationalism_vs._globalism

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