Vote for Joe

The Great Depression “…hit us like a tornado.” Sort of like what happened with the deadly tornados in Nashville, Tennessee last week? A metaphoric harbinger of things to soon come? Maybe… I watched a documentary about the Great Depression last night. It explained that the “Roaring ’20s” was a prosperous era where credit started to be floated to, not just the big companies, but the general public. The general public started to play the stock market for “easy money.” The market kept going up and up… As, concurrently, unbridled materialism was on the rise, and sexual inhibition was on the decline (“flappers,” as just one example). All the latter, incidentally, is antithetical to sound spirituality. What’s more, its easy to see a corollary to what’s been going on recently with the stock market at the highest point ever, unbridled materialism, American consumers floating on an unprecedented $35 trillion sea of debt, sexual inhibition almost totally out the window… The stock market crashed in 1929 and God, it seemed, allowed a time of realignment in the country. People lived simply, shared with each other, and went back to relying on God. That is a formula much more aligned with making it to heaven. The other is a formula much more aligned with, well, making it to hell.

The coronavirus is currently leaving movie theaters empty in America, delaying movie releases, and hurting the industry in general. Good! A vast majority of modern movies glorify sex, violence, drugs… Does anyone, honestly, think they would find Jesus sitting next to them at a majority of these films (including at, say, even PG-13 films)? Watching most of this stuff is called: “sin behavior.” Its just that you’re not hearing it much from the priests/ministers — because they’re watching the same stuff! We’ve been incrementally desensitized to sin in this society, and these films contribute tremendously to this. Not to mention, but I will, we are now exporting this all over the world. In a very real sense, this is “cultural terrorism” that’s putting all kinds of souls in jeopardy worldwide. Note: After the coronavirus passes, we can either stream (pun-intended) back into these theaters to watch more of these films, or we can boycott these types of films. [They initially listened to Jonah at Nineveh, but then the people went back to their old lifestyles — and God destroyed the city 40 years later. And, incidentally, this is not just about a city/country, it’s about each of our souls now. Anyone’s life could end tomorrow, coronavirus, or not.]

I heard a news segment today about the “loneliness epidemic” sweeping the elderly population. Not only are they in the deadly (for some) cross hairs of the corona virus, but many are facing this, more often than not, pretty much alone. Why? Because our mobility has taken Mary, one of the daughters, to a software company in Seattle. It’s taken Carl, a son, to Des Moines for a job in management at a factory. It’s taken another daughter, Carol, to New York for a job in the cosmetics industry… You see, we’ve, many of us, traded in family and all the quality community building with our friends, neighbors, teachers, coaches… growing up, for the highest paying job elsewhere. And advanced mobility (highways, trains, planes…) have allowed us to do that — at a staggering pace. But is that what God wanted for us? Or did He want us to continue living in our community of origin, continuing to build on these relationships, continuing to be there for our loved ones… (The Amish do that.) It’s just that we got “blinded by ambition,” but called it other stuff. And most people ‘bought’ into it. Time to realign. Time for many of us to move home. Note: Our Social Security platform revolves around seniors feeling “socially secure” in their communities. The platform is much more than just about a monetary “fund.”

It’s the perfect storm. An oil price war triggered by the Saudis this last weekend is combining with the coronavirus outbreak to create worldwide instability. Stocks are falling rapidly, cities are quarantined, businesses are taking big hits… What a perfect time to start to realign! For instance, I watched a PBS Special on “American Mobility” last night. We’re a nation that is majorly: ‘transportation addicted.’ Cars, trucks, rail, planes… America uses 143 billion gallons of motor gasoline a day and 186 million gallons of aviation gasoline. This is beyond nuts, especially in the face of catastrophic global warming. We went at this whole transportation thing in America, since practically the beginning, at a breakneck pace, without any real prayerful, considered discernment — like the Amish have with this. As a result, our moddern mobility has decimated the environment, fractured family and community, and is responsible for massive amounts of deaths and maiming each year. And we, now, are like a collective “addict” on the verge of hitting a bottom, with two choices. Become teachable about another way to “go,” or die. For more on what we desperately need to become teachable about, see our position paper on transportation.

The most high profile coronavirus cases, outside of Wuhan China itself, have been on cruise ships. These ships are emblematic of over-the-top First World luxury. Meanwhile, almost a million people are homeless in northern Syria, a majority of the populace is “stick thin” in Haiti, some 24,000 people starve to death every day in the world… And people are spending their money on “basking in luxury.” How spiritually nuts does that get! Read: The ‘luxury guy’ and ‘Lazarus the beggar’ in the Bible. [Luke 16: 19-31]. In the afterlife, where the ‘luxury guy’ is going, there are no cruise ships, or even water for that matter.