Greetings Kossacks. The diary I'm presenting today is not mine, I'm writing on behalf of my Great Uncle Butch (he's blind, or else he'd write it himself and would probably be on this site everyday). For as long as I've known him, Uncle Butch has been greatly interested in politics, philosophy and religion, and I've had many great times discussing these subjects with him. He may not hold any advanced degrees or be college educated, but that hasn't stopped him from learning all he can, and, even after he went blind, he still listens to the news everyday, listens to books on tape, and has a machine which scans and reads books to him. He's a lifelong Democrat and is probably the most liberal person I know, other than myself.
Last week, Uncle Butch asked me to come over and write down some of his thoughts on politics and religion, and he wanted to know if I could post it on some of the sites I visit on the internet. And, so, that is what this diary is, my Uncle Butch's thoughts, word for word what he told me to write down. I hope that this diary will generate some discussion, so when I go back to see him later this week, we'll be able to extend the discussion further.
This is both a warning and a wondering. So, without further ado, my Uncle Butch in his own words....
At a time in which we should be uniting in a war against a force that truly wants to nuke and decapitate every man, woman, and child on the planet that doesn't think as they do, we are once again at war with ourselves. This is a war that truly started the day man became men. We are at war with the different mindsets and the forces that produce and control these mindsets. Like all wars we must figure out who the enemy is. And that is what this message/warning is all about.
It was a little over 150 years ago that Honest Abe warned us about a house divided. Because we failed to heed his warning, we are now a house polarized.
Some 70 years ago, John Steinbeck in his book The Grapes of Wrath warned us about what happens when our government doesn't have programs that benefit its people. Because our government didn't have these programs, so many farmers starved and all because of ideology.
70 years ago in his movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, director Frank Capra tried to warn us about a force in Washington whose philosophy was for the enrichment of themselves, profit, and material.
Because we failed to heed the warnings of these three men, we have suffered through Tailgunner Joe and his House Committee, Tricky Dick and Watergate, Rat-Fucking and Henry, and 9/11/1973, the day this country helped overthrow another country's democracy; from this we got Ronnie, Ollie, and the arming of the contras; this led to Newt, the Hammer, Rove, the Dummy, and the Rummy, and because we didn't heed the warning of Honest Abe, John Steinbeck, and Frank Capra we got the Dick with one hand full of the deferments that protected his fatass from harm's way and the other hand full of the cherrypickings that have caused many, many deaths and still counting. And because we failed to choose substance over image, we have a Supreme Court that allows the corporations to buy whoever they want.
For those who don't truly know what being polarized means, let me give you my definition: it is when you have one group, those who keep an open mind, develop their positive traits, then begin to see, feel, and perceive reality in its truest form, versus the other, those who close, become fixed and arrested, then perceive a reality that deals in lies, deceptions, denials, and untruths. Let me give you an example: on one side we have Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Edward R Murrow, Paul Krugman, Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow, versus Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reiley, Glenn Beck, Jesse Helms, the John Birchers, and the Teabaggers, just to name a very small few.
There is no doubt that this country is totally polarized, and we know that the two subjects that polarize us the most are religion and politics.
Some years ago artificial intelligence beat the world's best chess player. Why?
Because artificial intelligence would become just like man, flawed, fixed, arrested, and just like Hal 9000 very, very dangerous without the proper data. Thus! Charles Darwin said that man evolved from apes, Carl Sagan said we all are made from stuff that comes from the stars. During the Presidential debates, evangelical preacher Rick Warren asked Senator Obama when he thought the soul entered the body, Obama didn't know; when he asked Senator McCain the same question, he answered at conception. This question was considered mainstream by all the newspapers and cable news outlets. My question is very simple: not when does the soul enter the body, but why? This question was answered some 80 to 90 years ago by Edgar Cayce: the soul enters Earth and planets like Earth for atonement. Now this begs a very important question: if we come for atonement at a place that has earth, air, fire, and water, that produces animals, minerals, and vegetables, and that develops cells, molecules, and DNA, where does all of the evil come from? Edgar Cayce, when telling us why we come, also told us why they come: over the eons, there are some souls who become so tarnished, they come for opposite reasons, mainly death and destruction; they are the ones who fueled the ovens, the purges, the killing fields, Bosnia, Rwanda, Congo, and Darfur. And now after billions of years of life on planet Earth, they now have mothers from the dominant species proudly sending their young, proudly sending their sons and daughters off to become human bombs, proudly sending their sons and daughters off to become mass murderers.
OK, I've gotta few questions that go directly to the Christopher Hitchenses and the Bill Mahers of the planet: does the soul enter beings on planet Earth, who evolved from lower forms and who are made from energy that comes from the stars, do these souls enter these beings by chance or by design? Are we one with universe by chance or by design?
James A. Grieshaber, aka Butch.