Giving the Devil His Due

They say the Devil is in the details. There are a few other things you can know about Satan. Satan doesn’t give a damn what you think of him or whether he is being “fair” or not. He doesn’t care whether you believe in him. Your only choice in the matter is how aware you want to be of “Reality”. People who hold ideas at odd with those of Satan will encounter untold resistance from Satan. Satan is not moved by threats. Satan has unlimited patience paired with unlimited persistence, and those two are a dangerous combination. And Satan always had another Ace up his sleeve. If Satan decides that he wants something, you know he is going to get it. If Satan wants you to believe one thing over another, Satan has enormous persuasive powers at his disposal.

They say that the Devil is in the details. While others are trying to wish their worries away, the Devil plans out everything carefully. The Devil is one who actualizes his goals. People always hope their friends are 110% behind them, but that their enemies are divided. Adolph Hitler kept out hope to the end that England would come to its senses and split with France, seeing that they and Germany had so much in common. People say Mark Bove’s Christian ministry “spontaneously” happened, even though he’d been planning and hoping for it for years. Political candidacies aren’t “spontaneous” any more. If fads were as “spontaneous” as people would believe, advertising agencies would have gone out of business long ago. You know even some liberals don’t fully grasp the menace of the tea party crowd. Thom Hartman keeps saying that we liberals can find common ground with them on some issues. But Hartman knows well that these “astro turf” backed groups are the tools of the corporatocracy. It’s become apparent who is pulling all the strings. So in this spirit one could say that the Simpson’s image of Ned Flanders is hopelessly out of date. That is the portrayal of the kind and basically harmless Christian. Today’s Born Agains are quite politically active. Things are changing so rapidly that some space alien visiting this country in 2006 and then just coming back today would be amazed at the marked changes in just these four years. For one thing the turn-around in John Mc Cain has occurred largely in these past four years. George Bush tried to pass a “reasonable” immigration bill back then and John Mc Cain was all for it. Now Mc Cain is staunchly against any form of “amnesty” or “making it all right” with illegals now here. There doesn’t seem to exist a tea bagger who isn’t a world class liar and a hypocrite. They all have bought into the same laundry list of corporate agenda items. Rush Limbaugh’s show of twenty years ago seems almost quaint by today’s standards with all of these “updates”. You had the gay update and the condom update and the feminazi update and the environmentalist whacko update and the animal rights update- - usually covering some really off the beat humerous topic. Today you would by contrast have a “starve the poor” update, the “torture the prisoner” update, the “corporate greed is good” update and “the President is a Nigger” update. What was funny back then is suddenly very un funny now. These people appear to march in lock step and- as I say- work off the same political check list sheet. And it all may well get worse before it gets any better. The liberal tide is still ebbing dangerously.

Last night I watched a thing on Thomas Jefferson on KCOE. He was very devoted to his wife, Patsy, and she bore six children and three of them died. When she died Jefferson vowed never to marry again, and apparently he didn’t. They said he wrote only one book covering a vast array of topics. One of these was on the Negro in America. Jefferson regarded Negroes as inferior lacking the mental capacities of Whites. He said that Roman slaves like Spartacus did amazing things, but that's because they were white. Apparently Jefferson didn't know about the slew of Black inventors such as George Washington Carver. I'd like to ask Jefferson what he meant when he wrote "All men are created equal". Jefferson described their dark skin and different physical characteristics from White people, and pointed to the distinctly disagreeable odor they emitted, and their sweat glands were more active. And yet Jefferson is not above having sex with them, even while his wife was in ill health and to whom he professed undying love. Jefferson wanted to bring up the topic of abolishing slavery in the Declaration of Independence but he was talked out of it.. Jefferson and John Adams were supposed to write the Declaration of Independence together but Adams said, "You do it; you're a better writer" Of course there was a guy on the internet last week being interviewed by Ralph Nader. And he wrote a book “The Dark Side of American History” and we learn things like Woodrow Wilson, whom formerly I had regarded as a highly moral man, deliberately wanted Americans killed on the Lucitania so that the United States would enter the War. England didn’t want Americans boarding the ship citing the danger. We know Roosevelt turned back a boatload of fleeing Jews from Germany seeking refuge in this country. We learn that the Maine probably wasn’t attacked by the Spanish but rather- - it was an accidental boiler explosion, that got us into the Spanish American war. Abraham Lincoln led military forces into committing atrocities that would not exactly be kosher by today’s standards. I believe he wanted to burn down Baltimore if Maryland ever sided with the confederacy. Abraham Lincoln was a psychologically depressed person for most of his life and this war gave him kind of a real purpose. George Washington physical abused and even mutilated his slaves by cutting off their toes to keep them in line and also played footsy with Pennsylvania law so that he could keep slaves within the borders of a free state. We know that states had their own Churches in those days and last night I learned that in Jefferson’s time, Virginia still had the death penalty for heresy. So many of these dark facts would play right into the hands of conservatives as a shield for their own advocation of misconduct today. We know about these Neo Cons. Suddenly Red China is our best buddy and we should turn a blind eye to abuses of power. I honistly don't know how this "New Word Order" where everyone in the world is reduced to subsistance wages somehow became fashionable among the Right. I didn’t stay up terribly late last night. I slept well.

In the morning I got up and went to the bakery for a large coffee as usual. Then I switched on the TV and it was still channel 50 and who did I see but our old friend Wayne Dyer. They were fund-raising of course. You could buy the entire multi-hour lecture unabridged if you wanted to pay the money. Dyre talked about beauty and love and “intensions” today. He said that if you resist any thing or any idea – notably one of his- - you are only draining energy from yourself and denying the creative force within you. These people are obviously entitled to their opinions but in the case of Dr. Levy they tend to become highly dogmatic where each and every person in the room is compelled to agree with everything the speaker says. Personally I am willing to live with the idea that I don’t know everything and the world won’t come to an end if tomorrow or next week or next month I discover perhaps I was wrong about this or that idea. We had oatmeal this morning and I had Andrew’s orange juice. We had a fried egg and toast with butter and jelly. I poured myself seconds on coffee from the back counter. I came back intending to turn on Stephanie Miller but instead I hit the TV and there was Dyre on the tube, still talking. But he was just about done. His ideas are nice sentiments but as the pragmatist asked “What does it have to do with the price of tea in China?” People are a product of their experiences for the most part. Trying to talk a person down from a political stance he has taken is like Lyndon John believing he can woe Ho Chi Min into making peace by promising him money for hydroelectric projects and other things in the North. People with weak arguments resort to labels. Most religious demagogues regard open dialog as the Devil’s tool. To not be mindful of what the world thinks is folly, both politically and karmicly. To expend psychic energy “trying to deny the elephant in the room” is not only tiresome, but it won’t get the elephant out of the room. How are his beliefs going to affect one politically? It could well be that Dyre may be politically useful to the left, although with most religion, these people tend to keep their beliefs to among themselves, almost as if they were ashamed of them, or that holding them up to public scrutiny might somehow “magically” take away their power.