PART TWO
I started this yesterday, and today is for finishing up tidying up.
Any humanitarian crisis is a tragedy and the one in Yemen is no different.
Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world. A war has been going on there for four years between the Yemeni government and the Houthi militia, with both claiming control of the government. The tragic results are millions of Yemenis displaced, medical infrastructure all but gone, and roughly ten thousand dead, including death from famine, with the vast majority of those numbers being children. The United Nations' coordinator for Yemen, Lise Grande, said in an interview, "I think many of us felt as we went into the twenty-first century that it was unthinkable that we could see a famine like we saw in Ethiopia," adding that those who die from starvation in Yemen could top 13 million. (The Ethiopian famine from 1983-1985 claimed 8 million lives.)
The United States in involved in this war, plain and simple, in support of the Yemeni government. It is involvement in a war that has never been approved by the U.S. government, which is the way it is supposed to work. We had been engaged in airborne refueling of their planes, and we continue to sell bombs and other weapons to them and help the government's army strategically pick targets. Since this has begun four years ago, our involvement began during President Obama's tenure and has continued during President Trump's tenure. (If you know anything about recruitment tactics, you can imagine how our involvement is fueling more men to join terrorist organizations with anti-American positions.)
Our escalated involvement is why, on his first trip abroad as President, Donald Trump was lavished upon by the Saudis.
My feeling is summed up in this meme ...
We need to end our military involvement in Yemen now!
I think technology is a good thing. (Consider my typing my blog on my laptop and it appearing on the Internet.) I drive a car which has all sorts of technology throughout and I own a smart phone. Technology is everywhere and it is supposed to be for our benefit, not our capitulation. One example: I recall one of my Facebook friends posting the question of how often people charged their phones. When I stated that I do so every few days, they were genuinely gobsmacked, citing charging their phones as often as two or three times a day.
I think my being a fifty-seven year old person who does use technology makes me an old fuddy-duddy because I prefer sitting down and typing thinks like this blog while on my laptop. Not that my eyesight is poor, even though I do use a pair of off-the-rack magnifying eyeglasses purchased at a dollar store, but I just feel more comfortable sitting down and typing. (Maybe being raised on typewriters has something to do with it.)
One of my more recent surprises with technology, although it's been several years ago, was when my mother was in the hospital for an overnight stay. The nurse who came in take mom's last vitals before being discharged took what looked like a pen of some kind and pulled it across mom's forehead, as though she was drawing a straight line on a piece of paper. When I asked her what she just did, she replied she had taken mother's temperature. I was floored and replied something to the effect of No way! and That's 'Star Trek' stuff! (Bones, of course, would think nothing of it.)
Getting back to smart phones, we have really become a society obsessed with them, haven't we? There are videos everywhere of people driving while texting -- that, alone, got so bad that "DWT" (Driving While Texting) became a legal thing -- or walking into things, all with their heads bowed down (as if to create a kind of skeletal question mark out of their bodies) and their eyes glued to the rectangular screens, hypnotized. What's on that screen is far more interesting that the world around you? Really? Those who might answer in the affirmative should, at the very least, consider their personal safety. Paying attention to your surroundings is one way to try and keep yourself from harm. You might say being on a phone is not as serious as a surgeon operating, but what if that surgeon was operating on you and allowed him/herself to be equally distracted?
Things like technology, and some would include entertainment and sports as well, can be huge distractions to what is going on in the world around you, but it is also a means by which things like the transhumanism movement have been gaining footing. We have become so enamored -- not amazed, like I was when the nurse took my mom's temperature -- but enamored to the point of passive observers, with no other response than that of children who want to keep seeing something more. Transhumanism is not about the androids from Isaac Asimov's I, Robot series, or even, more recently, Sophia. No, its interest is in turning us, human beings, into bio-robots with immortality as one of the goals.
Additionally, why are we still so afraid of death, which is a natural part of life?
We really need to stop being hypnotized by technology and start paying attention to the world around us. If we continue to be enraptured with the latest gadgetry, then the results will not be good for humanity.
One of my hopes in recent years was to continue this blog long enough to see, hopefully, the current U.S. President, Donald Trump, voted out of office. I say "hopefully" because no one expected he would win the 2016 election, so I cannot say that a loss for him in 2020 is guaranteed. Sad to say, the two years he has been in office, only half-way through his term, have been a disaster.
Any study of presidential history will show that the forty-fifth president is not the only president who has had scandals during his tenure: Warren G. Harding's Teapot Dome, Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra Affair, Bill Clinton's extramarital affairs, Richard Nixon's Watergate, are a few examples. And yet, we have never had a president whose words and deeds were so abhorrent, so unacceptable, and so un-presidential as those of the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Additionally, we have never had a president who has embraced enemies of the U.S. and given a cold shoulder to its allies, either. Some might argue that was the case with Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama. However, Obama's approach was along the lines of talking to our enemies can be done. If something positive comes of it, great. If not, then we have at least tried. Hardly an embracing of our enemies. Others may argue our involvement with various governments and military regimes by providing money and weapons may demonstrate that. Believe me, I do not agree with the method or the reasoning, but they were done with the idea that a "good" side was fighting against a "bad" side, not an embracing of an enemy of the U.S., as misguided and ill-conceived as each instance of that was.
What I mean here, with regard to the current president, is the open embrace, rhetorically and literally, of leaders who are, in essence, dictators (as he touts their accomplishments and relishes their praises for him), coupled with the less-than-flattering language he uses about our long-standing allies. No president before him, not a single one of his forty-four predecessors has done that.
He is responsible for the longest government shutdown ever, possibly looking to declare a "national emergency" in order to pillage allocated monies to fund an unnecessary wall. He, his family, and his businesses (which he never fully disassociated from, something else none of his predecessors ever did) are under multiple investigations. He was investigated by the FBI for possibly working on behalf of Russia after firing then-FBI Director James Comey (with the findings of that investigation having been added to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing Russian investigation). He constantly lies and he flip-flops on what he will or will not do about as fast as a fish out of water.
I have mentioned before on this blog about how people need to strop voting out of fear, as they are being exploited by doing so. Clearly, those who voted for Trump did so, in part, out of fear. It appears, though, they also went to the voting booth craving bombast and attitude, both of which never solve problems. They got it and the country is, on many levels, paying a steep price.
The Church, in general, speaks often of the chipping away at it by forces outside the church, a la good resides in here and bad resides out there. To be fair, The Church has always had to deal with, and sometimes act or exist in contradiction to, the goings-on in society at large. (Society at large doesn't always get it right, either.)
One of the hardest things to do is to critically look at yourself and identify and acknowledge the bad things about you. The Church, when it speaks of things outside of it as the problem, is falling into the same trap. It must look at itself, honestly and critically, to see where many of its problems lie.
I wrote just last month, once again, about sexual abuse by priests. There are other wrongs within the broad banner of The Church. Things like monetary abuses, such as the late Oral Roberts saying, in 1987, that God told him he needed the raise $8,000,000 or God would "call [him] home" and got it (over $9,000,000, in fact), or Creflo Dollar asking for $65,000,000 for a "necessary tool" private jet four years ago and got it, or Apostle David E. Taylor being under criminal investigation three years ago for financial misappropriations, including expensive cars, a mansion, and expensive clothes.
The last two examples above are examples of a phenomenon that has been around for a while called the "prosperity gospel". Much of the Bible that speaks of prosperity, wealth, and riches speaks of them in terms of blessings from God or God sharing Heavenly riches. There is nothing about God raining down money upon ministers or God wanting ministers to receive ridiculous amounts of money from their congregations. The only prosperity to be found in the prosperity gospel is that of those who promote it.
A sad side effect is so many smaller churches that do the right things and do good works end up being collateral damage from all of this kind of behavior.
These actions [sexual abuse by Catholic priests and bilking money] are just two examples of how The Church should really take a good, long, hard look within itself and start cleaning up its act before it can address how terrible the world around it is. Many times, it is these very abuses that make so many willfully decide they want no part of it.
Okay, I think that is more than enough tidying up.
As I have mentioned before, the end is near for this blog. Yesterday and today were the last two posts before the final post. That final post will be one week from today, on January 22, 2019. See you then.
Terry
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