It was reported today that Trump’s golf outings this first term have cost the tax payers $133 million (traveling costs, Secret Service detail, etc.), and counting. This far eclipses Obama’s golfing at the same point in his presidency. I, on the other hand, have played a few rounds at the Bluffton Golf Course ($20 a round). But I primarily chip in the backyard. What’s more, I don’t even need a Bluffton Police detail. Populist? With a capital P! [And that’s not P for “Par.”] LOL
I was doing some foreign relations research with this book last night. I was reading, specifically, about a 26-year bloody civil war in Sri Lanka. But I wasn’t looking at it in an isolated sense, but rather as it being emblematic of a template that has been playing out over and over, in various ways, worldwide, because of the modern phenomenon of “globalization.” The British colonized Sri Lanka in the early 1900s, primarily because they found the upland areas suitable for lucrative growing of coffee, tea and rubber plants. In turn, this greed fueled the importing of large numbers of Tamil workers from southern India. These people were turned into “indentured servants (read: slaves).” And they quickly became about 10% of the population in Sri Lanka. Time passed. In 1948, Colonial Sri Lanka ended. But the Tamil were now discriminated against by the majority Sinhalese government. This included several mass killings/genocide of the Tamil. The Tamil, in turn, formed a rebel group to fight the government. As mentioned at the outset, the civil war lasted 26 years, and as of 2009 there is a tenuous peace. Now here’s the kicker, and how it relates to, say, the U.S. We don’t go in and forcibly colonize these smaller, poorer countries, and plant a flag. No, we ‘plant’ corporations. We then pay sweatshop wages (read: slave labor). And the corporations work behind the scenes to pay governments for favorable tax rates, access to natural resources, and so on. We just don’t call it colonization. We call it doing business in a global market economy. This, in turn, continues to perpetuate poverty loops in these countries, continued class tensions, and a constellation of other sociological problems.
I was reading part of this book today. One excerpt: “As a world community, we are actually standing by while thousands of children die every day from water scarcity and water borne diseases. Some 6,000 children a day die from water related maladies.” This, more than anywhere, is in some of the more arid Third World countries. Meanwhile in the First World, in nations like America, we are forever watering our lawn simply because we want it as green as possible. We are wasting billions of dollars yearly on non-nutritional beverages (pop, sparkling water, beer…). We are taking 15 to 20 minute showers… And I could go on, and on, and… America would do well to lose most of the junk beverages, for one, and go to water rationing as well, until we develop more of a “water conservation habit.” In tandem, we would also do well to take the tremendous savings from this to mobilize, by a factor of 100, way more initiatives into these Third World countries to establish many more clean drinking water systems. “But God, when did we see you thirsty?” We’ll ask.
NASA is preparing for the Artemis Missions back, for one, to the moon. A “Star Date” news show today reported that, as part of these missions, millions of dollars were being spent to develop space equipment to look for water on the moon. The best they can determine, so far, is that the only water is frozen in deep craters on both poles and not easily accessible. Meanwhile, one billion people on this planet are without clean drinking water, and many die each year from water born disease. Trump is backing the Artemis thing. I wouldn’t. I’d take the money, and technological know how, and try to get efficient, clean drinking water systems to as many in the Third World as possible. See, these people are getting sick now. They are dying now. For more on what I’d do to help in the Third World, see our foreign policy…
Iran has continued to vex the international community with it’s ongoing nuclear program. The U.S., the European Union, and the UN Security Council established an “Iran Nuclear Deal,” with checks and balances on that country’s nuclear program, but Trump has pulled the U.S. out of the deal and went back to imposing sanctions on Iran. There has been ongoing “…suspected nuclear weapons research done in Iran.” To this point, specifically, America has 2,700 deployable nuclear weapons. Iran sees America as adversarial. Common sense says that, of course, Iran would be racing to develop nuclear weapons to protect itself. So… What if America started to ‘race’ toward nuclear disarmament, taking the savings and helping, way more, poorer countries, like: Iran? Do you think maybe God would honor this with a supernatural “missile defense system”? Maybe, huh.
I just interviewed a local park system “naturalist” who has a Masters Degree in Environmental Science from Iowa University. She said with those in the last two generations becoming increasingly unplugged, so to speak, from nature, many have developed what is now being referred to as: “Nature Deficit Disorder.” She said how this manifests in youth, among others, is with higher rates of obesity, Attention Deficit Disorder, depression… In fact, she continued, that in 2006 author Richard Louv’s book, Last Child in the Woods, has sparked a, colloquially speaking, Back to the Woods Movement, if you will, with parents, teachers, church leaders… intentionally starting to help youth re-engage with nature in a much more prolific way. What’s more, besides the good it does for the kids’ psyches, and such, the kids, in turn, often “…fall in love with nature.” And once you love something, well, you’re more apt to want to save it. Our administration’s stance on the environment is right in line with all this, and holds out a tremendous amount of models we’ve researched across the country to affect a tremendous shift toward the spirit of the paradigm I talk about here.
On Easter Sunday, in the midst of Third World countries battling the pandemic, Pope Francis called for “debt relief” for these countries. France’s Emmanuel Macron followed suit several days later. (At the turn of the millennium, Pope John Paul II called for the same thing in his Jubilee 2000 initiative.) As president, I would be wholeheartedly on board with this as well — and not just because of the pandemic. These Third World countries are barely treading water year-to-year, with the interest on the loans, and so on, keeping them there — with little left over for medical services, education, infra-structure… And as I would push for permanent debt relief for these countries, I would just as stridently push for a lot more aid into the same countries to help them become as sustainable as possible. My faith, the Catholic faith, teaches that in the Catechism actually: “Rich nations have a grave moral responsibility to ensure economic development in poorer nations.” Our administration would have this as a major priority. For more, see our position paper on Foreign Relations.
Nineveh was given 40 days to “repent.” And, well, this is modern Jonah’s 40th entry. So in summation, what precedes this essay is a series of essays that are a template for what’s going spiritually awry in America. And there’s a lot going awry! We’re spending less and less time with God, for one. Then there’s: abortion; gay marriage; transgenderism; sexual promiscuity across the board; massive amounts of pollution that’s destroying God’s creation; immigrants abandoned at the borders; people being abandoned in our inner cities; self-centered materialism that is leaving those in the Third World without the basics in food, shelter and medicine; addictions to practically everything (alcohol, drugs, gambling, work, sex…), dysfunctional families everywhere… I mean, it wouldn’t even take an Old Testament prophet’s keen eye to see this. Problem is, many of us have become so desensitized to it all, that, frankly, we can’t see it. Yet God seems to be trying to wake us up to it (more and more natural disasters, a worldwide pandemic, etc., etc…) Hopefully this writing will bring the problem into better focus. But the act of “repenting” isn’t just about finally realizing it, putting on some LL Bean sack cloth, and saying: “Sorry God.” No, it means a lot more than that. It means changing this stuff. It means spending more and more time with God in prayer. It means stopping abortion; ending gay marriage; stopping transgender surgeries; curbing the sexual promiscuity in our media entertainment, our dress, our behavior in general; it means sacrificing and living simply, with way more savings going to outreach to help our inner cities, the Third World, and so on; it means become good environmental stewards; it means healing families and developing, as an example, tremendous proactive recovery communities to impact addictions across-the-board… And, believe it or not, that’s just some of the change that needs to happen. But, indeed, it would be a good start. And hopefully enough to start to avert more of God’s wrath. And for me, it’s now time to head off to sit under a lone tree. And we all know how that goes. So then I’m going to have to find something else to do, like, oh I don’t know, maybe become president (of the U.S.) so I can help lead this change that needs to come, quick! “Prophet President.” It’s got a nice ring to it, huh. Although if my wife (and Almost First Lady) Liz knew I just wrote that last part, well, let’s just say she’d be a little “ouchy” at the Inaugural Ball. –“Average Jonah, out.” P.S. For the better part of 30 years, I have traveled the country extensively, researching models I believe God has been developing to underpin the change in this country that needs to happen. For a look at these models on our campaign website, go to…
In the last post, the priest notes that our societies throughout the world are saturated with sin these days, and God may have allowed (not that He directly caused it) a virus to let us know in the physical, at least some of how sick we have become spiritually. And yeah, abortion, gay sex, transgenderism, cloning… All pretty obvious spiritual sickness — that is if you’re reading the Bible, or Catholic Church teaching, or a combination thereof. But what else? Here’s one. Those of us in small town and suburban America, are leaving little kids abandoned, and their parents trapped in transgenerational poverty loops, in, as an example, American inner cities. These inner cities are now blighted war zones. Meanwhile all of us outside those inner cities, stay relatively comfortable, relatively safe, without virtually a second thought about these people. This is a huge sin of omission, and a huge sin of indifference! For five years, our family moved to a hardscrabble area of Cleveland to live among these abandoned people and to volunteer at an outreach to help them. And the poverty was palpable and the danger level was off the charts. (There were two homicides on our block in a four month period, as an example.) So, on the “repent” front. Is it enough to raise up a few “Alleluia, forgive me Jesuses!” And think everything’s then going to be alright? Or do we look, as just one example, at this inner city abandonment thing squarely in the eye, repent and: THEN MAKE IT RIGHT! Our campaign platform calls for nothing less than a Marshall Plan to rebuild and revitalize our inner cities. But more. It also calls for, through a series of creative urban development neighborhood designs and incentives, for some more well healed people to move back into our inner cities to live and help in solidarity, coupled with a tremendously proactive twinning of suburban and inner city churches, and so on. Luke 11:5 Jesus tells the story of a neighbor who comes to a friend’s house, says he needs some bread, and the friend smiles and says something like: “God bless ya buddy and have a good night.” But, oh yeah one thing. He doesn’t give the guy any bread. Uh… And it’s the same here. We know, really know, that these people in these inner cities need all kinds of significant help, and many of us bow our heads in suburban and small town church services during the prayer intentions, and pray: “Lord, please help the poor in our cities.” Then, well, we do nothing, or virtually nothing to really help. This is called being “spiritually sick.” Just like people, again, are getting ‘sick’ from the coronavirus. Time to wake up!
A Spanish priest, author, and apparently a pretty holy guy, in a quite recent interview, says he is convinced the coronavirus pandemic is a “lesson from God.” And if we don’t learn from the lesson, Fr. Antonio Fortea said there, most likely, will be another, and another… until we do. “That is why another horseman (of the Apocalypse) will come, and then another, until we understand the root of it is sin.” (For those of you doing the ‘Revelations math’ right now, that could be up to four horsemen.) One rider, incidentally, is given authority over a quarter of the earth, “…to kill with sword, famine and plague.” Um, if you’ve read the news the past few years, the world is saturated with war (sword), famine, and now, well, this coronavirus plague. I mean, it wouldn’t take a moral theology professor at Princeton to draw the corollary. And Fr. Fortea drew another corollary. He said the world is very “spiritually sick.” So what does God do? He sends a plague to start making people physically sick — so we’ll pay attention. Ultimately, the priest continued, God intends this to spark a “spiritual restoration.” That is, if we look up from the next Netflix movie long enough to figure it out. Fr. Fortea ended by saying our global society is as evil as the Egyptian society was in the Old Testament when God sent all the plagues. Now I wasn’t back there then, but I have to wonder if they were: dismembering 42,000 babies every day in their mothers’ wombs; cutting off their boys’ private parts and giving them hormone treatments to become girls; absolutely destroying God’s creation through First World gluttony (I mean how much CO2 did the chariots give off?); experimenting with cloning people (Even back then, I think they might of at least known that God was the “Author of Life,” not them), and I could go on, and on… Which, apparently these horse guys are going to do until, well, we get it. For a closer look at what we in America need to WAKE UP to, see…