Some Times We Can’t Decide Whether To

Laugh or Cry or Scream in Frustration

Every time we think things could not get worse

in our nations Capitol, They get worse.

Poor Joe Biden.  Members of our Presidents own Political Party are beginning to view him as “well past his best if used by date”.  Sort of like that dish of tuna and noodle casserole you left in the back of the refrigerator……  two months ago.

President Biden began his career as a Political Prodigy at a prestigious college where, many believe, he earned a Masters Degree in Plagiarism  and a Doctors Degree in Prevarication  before launching his career as a Senator who became a Vice President and now President. 

Along the way he tamed the town bully with his steely eyed glare.  In fairness it must be remembered that Corn Pop had been warned that Young Joe was a Third Degree Black Belt Plagiarist.

Tough as nails Joe also was at Teddy Roosevelts side as they charged up San Juan Hill during the Spanish American War.

Working man Joe also managed to make time for careers in, among other things, Long Haul 18 Wheel Truck Driving and working deep beneath the earth as a “Hard Rock” Coal Miner.  Truly a man of many talents.

Building his reputation for inter-racial relations, Joe studied at the knee of his long time friend and idealogical soul mate, Democratic Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia, a confidant and counselor with a long history in public and private service, including serving as a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.  From his friend Senator Byrd, then Senator Biden seems to have gotten his foundational knowledge in Critical Race Theory.

Serving with our President is his Vice President Kamala Harris who has become nearly invisible and being kept out of the public eye.

Her “Goodwill” trip to Central America was a political and media disaster with large crowds telling her to “Go Home”.  Poor Joe, not much help here. The mainstream media has shown one photo of  Kamala & her husband kissing.  Both wearing a mask.  Take that where you will.  But as Joe would say “Come on man!”

Other players in the White House Team include Anthony J. Blinken playing the part of Secretary of State.  I was always of the belief that the Secretary of States job was to be a Cheerleader for the United States, making sure our interests were protected worldwide and spokesman for all that is good about the United States.  Secretary Blinken seems to be carrying on the Obama worldwide apology tour and going “hat in hand” to the United Nations begging for forgiveness for our (non-existent) Systemic Racism. 

Other members of the Biden “team” include Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Army General Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  A sort of “Frick & Frack” twosome of  Critical Race Theory “Kool-Aid” drinkers.  Both bent on turning the best fighting force in the world into a band of “hand-wringing” apologists for America’s greatness.  If I were still in the military (see closing comments), I would be ashamed  to serve under either of them.   

Closing Comments

On a more serious note and in closing I will share my own experience while in the Military.  I spent ten years total in the Army National Guard.  Six of those years in a Combat Infantry Unit and four years in a Medical Brigade.  In all of those years I do not remember there ever being a single instance of anything resembling a “racial” issue.  I served with members of all colors and all races.  We were soldiers.  Not white soldiers or black soldiers or brown  soldiers or oriental soldiers.  Just soldiers.  We served together, slept together, ate together and had each others back.  When we were called into a riot situation we stood shoulder to shoulder, color did not matter, in our minds we were all “green”.   To this day if I visit a military hospital or other place of service, I feel a kinship, comradery and spirit of belonging. 

In my world if I have a problem with someone, it is personal, race is never an issue.

Bob Bandy – August 2021

ASSAULT ON AMERICA

Astute observations or conspiracy theories?

I have come to the conclusion through observation  that the United States, in which I grew up, is midway through the third wave of its destruction.  That is the United States most of us have loved all of our lives.  That destruction seems to be coming at us in waves.  Three so far.

FIRST WAVE

Wuhan Lab – Wuhan Province – China

The First Wave came ashore from Wuhan, China.  Home of the Covid 19 Virus and Fentanyl:

Fentanyl, though manufactured in Wuhan,  is mainly imported/smuggled in through our porous southern border by Drug Cartels and makes its way into the illegal drugs sold on the streets of America by gangs.

The Covid 19 Virus was most deadly to our senior citizens and the drug Fentanyl has been deadly to younger, drug addicted Americans.

Covid 19, which we are told may have “accidentally” escaped from the Wuhan Viral Lab, arrived in the United States mainly from infected local Wuhan Chinese residents who, while infected, visited major United States population centers as “tourists”.

Keep in mind also that the Lab in Wuhan had been the recipient of hundreds of thousands of U.S. Taxpayer dollars though their connection with Dr. Anthony Fauci,  the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

There are those who believe the Chinese Government, though they vehemently deny it, played a role in this because they were desperate to wreck the booming American economy and keep Donald Trump, whom they despised because he was such a tough negotiator, from getting re-elected.  They preferred a new president who would be more malleable,  perhaps someone related to Hunter Biden whom they had already enriched in a sweetheart deal.  Is this true?  We will likely never know the truth but it does have a certain “ring” to it.  But the fact is the U.S. economy did crash, partly due to the virus but mostly due to decisions by major Democratic Governors to put their states into “Lockdown”, forcing businesses to shut down and untold millions of otherwise productive citizens to stay home.  Un-numbered  hundreds of thousands of small businesses failed and small business people lost everything.  The economy “crashed” and has yet to show any significant recovery, despite government claims.

This first wave destroyed our health and our economy.

SECOND WAVE

photo: i.b.times

The 2020 Presidential Election:

Millions and millions of American’s, a significant percentage of voters, believe that this was not an election.  It was a very well planned, carefully orchestrated and expertly carried out Coup.  Though hotly denied by the left, it is a fact that if you can corrupt some, fewer than you might think, specific, key voting districts, you can control the results of an election.

Despite mainstream media and social media giants efforts to deny and cover up any malfeasance in the election process, enough facts have escaped to  cause more than just suspicion.

Voter precincts with more ballots cast for Biden that Registered Voters in the precinct.  Large pallets filled with supposedly mail in ballots all uniformly flat as if they came out of a copier with no evidence of ever having been folded into a mail ballot envelope. “Mysterious” truckloads of “harvested” ballots delivered to counting centers “after hours”.  Thousands and thousands of mail in ballots from folks who had moved out of their voting district long before the election.  And, it goes on and on.

Whether any of this is ever proved or disproved does not change the fact that the American voting public, in majority numbers, no longer trust the voting process and over 80% of all voters believe positive voter ID should be required to vote.  The left does not want this.

The result is that faith in our sacred voting rights system is laying in shambles.  Trust is gone.

The second wave destroyed our trust in our government.

THIRD WAVE

photo: Krakowpost

Critical Race Theory, Black Lives Matter, ANTIFA:

These, and similar organizations, all have their roots in Marxism and desire to tear down, burn everything and start over under their control.

Whatever is left over after the first two waves, is under dire threat of destruction from this third wave and from these organizations which are in full attack mode.  If you disagree with them, they charge you with racism to put you on the defensive.  That charge is used as a weapon to keep you quiet.

Their goal is to tear down statues (even Abraham Lincoln statues), rewrite history, tear up the Constitution and rewrite it to their specifications.  Their is no room in their world for America as it was founded and democracy as it has been practiced.

In addition they demand equity, not equality, in a purely Communist format.  Their form of equity invariably leads to the very rich having their own form of equity,  those in power have their own form of equity and everyone else has equity in poverty and misery as slaves to the state.  Think Cuba.

This third wave instead of uniting us, fractures our unity along racial lines,  non-negotiable demands and threatens our very Democracy.

I believe at every stage of this assault, our government has lied to and failed us.  Am I wrong?

If you can agree with what is written here, share it with a friend, a family member or a neighbor.  If we do nothing, we let those who hate America win by default. We need to push back and make our voices heard.

Bob Bandy – July 2021

The following guest article gives a historical world overview of todays Social Justice campaign as it is being played out in both the Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory movements throughout the country.  It is well documented, accurate and thought provoking.  I found it brings much needed clarity to what we are witnessing today.  I recommend a careful reading and sharing of this important document.   Bob

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The World View of “Social Justice”

by Rev. Steven Krogh

Everyone has a world view. Each of us has a core understanding of who we are, our purpose in life and how we see the world. Our world view works as a “lens” through which we see the world. A common phrase denoting this way of thinking is, “Seeing the world through rose colored glasses.” Another way of thinking about world view is to compare it to a map. A map tells us where we are and how to get to the next place. Or we can consider our world view as a kind of puzzle. In putting a puzzle together, it is essential to have the original picture (probably on the box) so one can decipher what pieces go where. Without the original picture there is no reference to how all the individual pieces fit together to make a whole.

The easiest way to discover one’s world view is to ask four basic questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What’s wrong with the world? How can what is wrong be made right? To these questions, contemporary Social Justice, or more precisely Critical Social Justice, has very specific answers. However, to understand these answers one must know the origin of the concept of Critical Social Justice. The ideology behind Critical Social Justice can be traced all the way back to Karl Marx. Karl Marx saw the world (and human relationships in general) as a conflict between various people over limited resources. As such, Marx saw history as violently progressing through four stages: Ancient, Feudal, Capitalism and eventually Communism. For Marx, each stage of history was birthed by way of violent revolution. He believed that in his lifetime he was seeing the beginning stage of capitalism which would eventually be overthrown and replaced. Marx believed that capitalism would be toppled worldwide because of its innate oppressive nature. He was a staunch atheist whose world view affected the next generation of his followers.

For Marx, the answer to the question of “Who am I?” was found in the theory of evolution. This world view saw human beings as a product of random evolutionary processes. “From the goo, to you, by way of the zoo”. This atheistic world view led Marx to answer the next question, “Why am I here?” with another evolutionary conclusion: We are here to consume and enjoy. “Get all you can; can all you get; sit on the can.” The third world view question, “What is wrong with the world?” Marx answered with a two-part solution. Either 1) We are insufficiently educated or 2) We are insufficiently governed. For Marx, every social ill could be “fixed” by either more education or by creating larger government to address the problem. This was Marx’s answer to the fourth question, “How can what is wrong be made right?” This is the world view that Marx developed, embraced and taught. The next generation of Marxists would adopt this same world view while attempting to address the issue of why the “revolution” wasn’t happening worldwide.

Although revolution certainly happened in Russia and other parts of the world, it didn’t happen worldwide as Marx had thought. Hence, the next generation of Marxists would ask why not? Why wasn’t capitalism overthrown by the masses worldwide since capitalism was inherently oppressive? One voice that gave answer to this question was Antonio Gramsci. He developed the concept of “cultural hegemony”. Hegemony is defined as leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over others. According to Gramsci, cultural hegemony referred to a certain group within a culture that set the rules and social norms for society in order to keep the masses oppressed while promoting the hegemony’s own self interests. Another set of voices that answered Gramsci’s question was the Frankfurt School. This group of Marxist scholars started in Frankfurt Germany, moved for a short time to Switzerland and eventually landed at Columbia University in New York. The Frankfurt School developed a methodology (based on a Marxist world view) of analyzing society called “Critical Theory”. Critical Theory (based on a Marxist worldview) gave Critical Social Justice its worldview. Critical Theory also gave us political correctness and multi-culturalism.

The Marxist worldview and its subsequent Critical Theory worldview are diametrically opposed to Western Culture. To understand this opposition between Marxism and Western culture, we go back to the four questions.

Question One: Who am I? For Western Culture, the answer to this question is found in its Judeo/Christian histsory. Western culture views humankind as being made in God’s image. This means that every human life is sacred. It means every human life has dignity and a divine calling. According to Marx, however (and critical social justice), human life is easily dispensable, and it’s worth found only in how one serves the Marxist (Or Social Justice) ideology. This is why Communists will resort to killing millions of their own citizens “for the greater good”. This is also why Marxist language employs the phrase, “The ends justify the means.” in carrying out mass executions. In contrast, the Declaration of Independence (one of the founding documents of America) states that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. This is why the Critical Social Justice movement is antithetical to the Judeo/Christian worldview.

Question Two: Why am I here? For Western Culture, humanity’s purpose is to glorify our Creator and edify our fellow human beings. Our God-ordained purpose is to take care of God’s creation and each other as we were divinely appointed. This is why western culture values equality. The Judeo/Christian worldview sees everyone as made in God’s image and, therefore, every person deserves to be treated equally. For Critical Social Justice, however, human beings are here only to consume and enjoy. Critical Social justice being an atheistic ideology, sees humanity’s purpose in strict biological terms. There is no transcendent purpose to humanity. We are here solely to pursue pleasure and to consume. This is why critical social justice is obsessed with equity. Equity and equality are not the same. Basically, equity means that everyone should have the same stuff.  Equality, however, means that everyone has the same opportunity. The goal of critical social justice is to forcibly create a society in which everyone has to have the exact same everything as everyone else.

Question Three and Four: What’s wrong with the world? How can what is wrong be made right? For Western Culture, what’s wrong with the world is that humanity does not do what they were divinely created to do . . . give praise and glory to the Creator. Tragically, humanity has turned away from God to serve themselves and not their creator. This state of brokenness is called “sin”. And the remedy for “sin” according to Christian thought is realized through the person and work of Jesus Christ. For Jews, the “sin” solution is found through observance of Judaic law. Critical Social Justice, in contrast, sees the problems of the world as stemming from either insufficient education or insufficient government. For Marxists and their ideological grandchildren, social- justice adherents, the only way to solve the world’s problems is through more education (as if educated people can never do bad things) or more government involvement (as if government is the solution to every problem).

There is much more to the worldview of critical social justice. It has taken a few generations to develop to what it is today. Hopefully this brief overview will help give a more general understanding of what is currently being played out within today’s culture.

Follow-up

The flyer below is for an in depth seminar on this subject to be held on July 31, 2021.  Following the seminar I will provide a link to the video presentation on this site.  Please check back after that date for the link.  Thank you.

photo credit – Victor Davis Hanson – Zerohedge – Tyler Durden

Excerpt from an article by Victor Davis Hanson June 11, 2021

Victor Davis Hanson: This Isn’t Your   Father’s Left-Wing Revolution

Sixties protestors mainlined divorce, abortion on demand, promiscuity, drug use and one-parent homes. But by the late 1970s and the 1980s, most veteran cultural revolutionaries had gotten married, were raising a family, bought a house, got a job and made money.

This time around, their offspring’s left-wing assault is different — and far more ominous.

The woke grandchildren of the former outsiders are now more ruthless systematic insiders. The woke and wired new establishment knows how to use money and power to rebirth America as something the founders and most current Americans never envisioned.

Name one mainline institution that the woke left does not now control — and warp. The media? The campus? Silicon Valley? Professional sports? The corporate boardroom? Foundations? The K-12 educational establishment? The military hierarchy? The government deep state? The FBI top echelon?

The left absorbed them all. But this time around, members of the left really believe that “by any means necessary” is no mere slogan. Instead, it is a model of how to disrupt or destroy American customs, traditions and values.

end of excerpt – full article available on line

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In a world where I can’t turn on a TV, look at a newspaper or hear a conversation without being confronted with “Wokeness”, Black Lives Matter and  Critical Race Theory, I have begun re-examining my own views on “Critical” issues in life.  In the process I have developed what I will call “Critical Bob Theory”.  My own theory is based on observations and facts and not on heated hyperbole. 

Critical Bob Theory

It seems that as a culture and nation we seem to be losing our grasp on established boundaries on cultural values, acceptable behavior, equal justice and expectations. Things that we can depend on being true, every time, all the time. 

Many sports are played on a field with boundaries and specific rules that must be complied with by contestants on both sides of the ball.  If those boundaries are not respected and rules not equally applied, chaos is the only possible outcome.

Nature has rules that are constant and predictable.  Gravity is one.  Fall or jump from an airplane several thousand feet in the air above the ground without a parachute or other flotation device and you will fall to earth. Not once in a while but every single time you do it. 

If we defy the laws of nature we will lose every time.  Natures laws are like basic mathematics, not negotiable.  2+2 is always 4.  

Civilization needs constants and as citizens we need reliable boundaries.  If our civilization loses it’s predictable constants and boundaries, we will lose our way and end up in a “through the looking glass” world where up is down and down is up, nothing makes sense, lacking direction in our lives and ending up confused and troubled.  I see much of this happening now.  Look at too many of our major cities that have become infested with unpunished crime, drugs and homeless encampments filled with misery and filth.

Most people of faith (I am Christian) have a set of laws set down by God to live by and to follow.  Honor your Father and your Mother,  Thou shall not murder, thou shall not steal, etc.  These were Commandments, not suggestions. They are constants.  They don’t change and if  we stray from those constants we find ourselves in trouble, morally and in many cases legally. 

At one time most of us thought Government was a constant, ruled and kept in check by the Constitution, Bill of Rights and those Amendments like guaranteeing Freedom of Speech,  Right to Bear Arms, etc.

A constant.  with Laws and Rights that apply to everyone equally, no fudging. 

But, government is not applying laws evenly and appears on a path to shred much of the original Constitution, Bill of Rights and those Amendments. 

If you join a group for a peaceful, unarmed, noisy protest at the Nations Capitol you can be labeled a Domestic Terrorist, locked up, without bail, indefinitely without trial.  However, if you engage in violent protests, destroying the private property of innocent citizens, looting and burning large areas of a major city under a false flag of “Racial Injustice” there are no legal consequences.  If arrested you will be released without bail and any record of arrest will be expunged by a corrupt legal system. 

Government no longer fills important positions on a merit based system.  Decisions are being made based on gender, gender identification, political affiliation and skin color.  

Government is no longer a reliable constant, it has become a purely political entity that seeks its own agenda and power for those in charge.  It also wants to force feed this divisive and destructive Woke Culture and Critical Race Theory propaganda to the most vulnerable of our population, our children.  

Nature is constant and has certain immutable laws.  Violate them at your own peril.  In the womb and at birth we are all either male or female.  Government may tell us that we can choose any of a long list of genders to live our lives as, it may even declare there are no longer any gender differences, surgeons can alter, many would say mutilate, physical biological differences,  but in the end they are not able to change genetics.  Too often these efforts only create pain, confusion and some measure of personal and social chaos.

I believe boundaries are an essential element of any successful culture and civilization.  Without them civilizations crumble and fall into the dustbin of failed civilizations in history.

If you agree with much of what is written here, please share this article with family, friends and neighbors.

Bob Bandy – June 2021

John Carpenters

Escape from New York (1981) IMDb

photo: Google

I am reprinting the following article because what it has to say is important.  Like many others I believe there are those who would take us down a path to destruction as a nation.  One that we have grown up in and many have fought and died to sustain.  These folks may be well meaning but they are engineering a national, and perhaps international disaster.  What follows is excerpted from the beginning of the article.

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The Following is Reprinted from:

Converge Media

WOKEISM – THE NEW RELIGION OF THE WEST

There is a new religion. It is moving like a tidal wave through every facet of western culture, shaping and redefining society as it goes. This religion masquerades under the guise of compassion and justice, but underneath is an evil ideology that is incompatible with western values and incongruent with the Christian worldview. This movement did not start in Minneapolis on May 25th, when George Floyd was murdered. That event acted as a watershed moment for an ideology that has been growing for decades. If left unchecked, this new religion could lead to a complete unravelling of western culture.

There are many names for what we currently find ourselves in; wokeness, political correctness, and cancel culture are some of them, but these only encapsulate a portion of the phenomenon. Cultural Marxism, neo-marxism, social justice, identity politics, and Critical Theory are broader descriptors. We would like to use a term that adequately captures the religiosity of the movement: wokeism.

Wokeism is a religion. Although it has not been organized into any formal religious structure, it has all the functions of religious doctrine. It has a unique epistemology (theory of knowledge), an evaluation of the human condition, and a redemption narrative. But from where did it come?

Critical Theory

In the early 20th century, a German school of philosophy called the Frankfurt School developed a social philosophy called Critical Theory. In a nutshell, Critical Theory critiques culture and challenges the underlying power structures of society. It is a movement to “liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them,” reinterpreting western culture as a story of the oppressor vs. oppressed. In Critical Theory, the only things that exist are hierarchies of power, and those hierarchies must be torn down. The goal of this movement, whether stated or not, is nothing less than the complete dismantling and rebuilding of western culture from the ground up.

Critical Theory started to become prominent among western academics in the 90s and eventually infiltrated almost every university in the western world. In recent years, the ideology has left the university and has made the jump to media and corporate culture, establishing itself as the primary moral culture within western societies. Currently, the main lines of separation between oppressors and oppressed are race, sex and gender identity.

This is not just a political or social movement within the framework of traditional enlightenment values. Concepts such as logic, science, and reason are viewed as tools of the oppressive white patriarchy. Values like individualism, hard work, punctuality and delayed gratification would be understood as perpetuating white supremacy. Critical Theory has become much more than a social philosophy and is the primary philosophical driving force behind the new civil religion of wokeism.

The goal of this movement, whether stated or not, is nothing less than the complete dismantling and rebuilding of western culture from the ground up.

The New Religion

Why call wokeism a new religion? The fact is that the rise of secular humanism over the past 70 years created a religion-shaped hole in our culture. Secularism, for all of its cultural dominance, failed to offer a robust philosophy of meaning and purpose, nor did it provide any moral framework for how to act within the world besides “be a good person because the alternative is undesirable for everyone.” Alternatively, wokeism has developed its view of reality with its own set of values and narratives. From the ashes of secular humanism, a new civil religion rises.

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To read the article in its entirety just google:

Wokeism the New Religion of the West

Bob Bandy – April 2021