this is what should keep you up at night…

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.
Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
Marie Curie

(Bela Lugosi as Dracula 1931)

When I was a kid, I loved watching those old black and white horror movies from the ’30s and ’40s—
Dracula, Frankenstein, The Werewolf, The Mummy, all the way up to the vampy ’60’s with
Vincent Price’s The Pit and the Pendulum, the Creature from the Black Lagoon
along with such cult classics as Dark Shadows.

At 10, I can remember telling my mother to buy real garlic and not that powdered stuff
she kept in her spice cabinet.
I needed the real deal in order to sleep soundly at night.
Throw in a Crucifix, of which hung on my wall, and all I needed was a silver spike,
some silver bullets and I would be safe and sound.

Ode to the imagination of a 10-year-old.

As an adult, having seen snippets from those same early horror flicks,
I now get tickled seeing the ridiculous over-emphasized melodramatics.

Looking back, however, I can remember the difficulty in trying to convince my
10-year-old self, complete with an overactive imagination,
that sleeping with a strand of garlic around my neck was not exactly prudent
and totally impractical.

Thankfully, I’ve outgrown the frightful likes of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff,
as well as Vincent Price…
however, there is one individual who does, in fact, leave me a bit
restless at night.
One whose very name can cast fear in my heart… just as he should yours.
And all because he remains more of enigma on the world stage rather than
a defined individual.

I’ve written about this individual before…
actually, all the way back in 2016 when the notion of Brexit was becoming a household word…

Of recent weeks, I’ve read a great deal concerning the global financial powers-that-be
bemoaning or gloating, depending on which side of the fence they line their pockets,
what a Brexit would do to the global economy.
The likes of George Soros, a man who has profited, or make that made a killing,
on the downward slopes of markets before (mainly the Bank of England),
is set to cash in once again.
And cash in big—but yet no one really knows how big he cashes in
as he doesn’t disclose much…
This man parlays deeply and dangerously into American politics as he gives and gives
graciously to the Clintons and their campaigns…
He plays his hand in global economies and seems to try to muscle the outcomes of elections
as well as markets worldwide—all to his benefit—

The rich and powerful trouble me.
Rich and powerful politicians trouble me.
Even our self-centered, anything and everything goes, millennials trouble me.

https://cookiecrumbstoliveby.wordpress.com/2016/06/25/should-we-go-or-should-we-stay/

Yes, George Soros troubles me.

And he should trouble anyone who loves America, democracy as well as the gift our
founding Father’s left for us.

And it’s because George Soros is determined to rewrite the Constitution of the United States.

However, this notion is nothing new and according to the authors of the book
I mentioned the other day…dark forces have long yearned to alter
The United States as you and I know it to be.

The book in question is not exactly new as it actually came out in 2006…
The Shadow Party
How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and the Sixties Radicals
Seized Control of the Democratic Party
by David Horowitz and Richard Poe

The authors explain that before there was George Soros, there were others who helped
to form Mr. Soros…just as Mr.Soros has helped to form the likes of others—
Hillary Clinton being one such individual.

Growing up, I knew early on from my interest in history and politics, and in part due to the
mystery surrounding the one time leader of the Teamsters Union, Jimmy Hoffa, that big Government
was sadly capable of just about anything.

Powerful people like…power.
Just as much as they like control.

J. Edgar Hoover
Franklin Roosevelt
Joseph Kennedy and his three famous sons
Richard Nixon
Bill Clinton
Hillary Clinton
Tip O’Neil
Huey Long
Barak Obama
George Soros
Bill Gates
Nancy Pelosi
Katharine Graham

the list of movers and shakers seems nearly endless…

And there are reasons as to why we are currently watching the rise of the Fab 4
Congressional leaders.
It is not coincidental.

Reasons you and I, the average citizen, need to understand.

And so reading, as I do each evening a few pages here and there,
I have certainly been given just enough information in order to produce more than
my fair share of nightmares.

If you are left scratching your head as to why we seem to be in such a mess these days in
this nation of ours, let me simply recommend this book…
It won’t take too many pages until you’ll begin to understand.

Informed citizens or clueless and mindless entities?
…those in the shadows prefer you remain clueless and most definitely mindless.

Sometimes we vote for a candidate not so much because we love them but because
we know they are the lesser of the evils…and becasue we know garlic
does nothing to help the evil intentions…

we live in both dark and light

“The true diversity of humanity is this: the luminous and the dark.
To diminish the number of dark, to increase the number of luminous,
that is the aim.
That is why we cry: education, knowledge!
To learn to read is to kindle a fire; every syllable spelled sparkles.
But whoever says light does not necessarily say joy.
There is suffering in the light; an excess burns.
Flame is hostile to the wing.
To burn and yet to fly, this is the miracle of genius.
When you know and when you love you will suffer.
The day dawns in tears. The luminous weep, be it only for the dark ones.”
― Victor Hugo

(prematurely fallen muscadine / Julie Cook / 2019)

See the picture above?

Look closely.

At first glance, you see some sort of greenish greyish orb perched in the middle,
amongst the debris of what must be some sort of woodsy ground.

However, upon further inspection, you will note that the right half of the green orb,
or rather a prematurely fallen muscadine, is the side with actual color,
as is the surrounding area.
The color of life and growth.

The left side appears to be rotting or rotten while the surrounding debris around the
muscadine is equally ashen and grey…as in decaying, rotting and dark.

It is a prime example of contrasting imagery between light and dark, life and death…
With the poor muscadine being caught in the middle.

And if the truth be told, that muscadine, my friends, is more representational of both you
and I then either of us can even begin to imagine.

Light vs dark…
life vs death…
While we are constantly suspended between the two.

It’s as if each one vies for our very being.
The endless struggle for mankind.

That struggle is much more active and much more real than most of us care to admit,
let alone contemplate…as the forces of both light and dark, life and death, continuously
wage battle over our very existence.

Metaphors, yes…yet also very much a reality.

I started an interesting book the other day, The Shadow Party
How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and the Sixties Radicals seized control of
the Democratic Party
by David Horowitz and Richard Poe.

“Ahhh”, you say rather knowingly…” one of ‘those’ types of books.”
A book that speaks of conspiracy and paranoia.
And so now you’re assuming that I am one of those paranoid loons or deplorables
we hear so much about—oh so lovingly nicknamed by Hillary Clinton…
all because I am a conservative individual reading a book that reads like
a Hollywood spy thriller.

Yet the book is much more than a tale of political upheaval, speculation and
finger-pointing.
The book actually, and perhaps unbeknownst to the authors themselves, speaks to this very
battle of both light and dark, life and death, that I previously referenced…
it’s just that they speak on a level that hits much closer to home than anyone might imagine
as it addresses our life here in America.

There is a great darkness growing in our Nation.
And it is both you and I who hang in the balance.

It is a life that is growing ever more precarious while we are perched between
both light or dark, life or death…
For we are living in some terribly strange times.

This book reminds me of a wonderful post I read the other day by one of my favorite bloggers—
Robert, Bobby, Kloska from Thoughts from the Side of the House.
Bobby is a former professor at Notre Dame who doesn’t
post as often as I or others would wish due to some tremendous health struggles
that get terribly in his way.

His struggles with cancer and the devastating outreaching effects have been an
amazing witness unto themselves.

I, for one, am most grateful that he continues to share both ups and downs.

This past week, for the fourth of July, Bobby wrote about what it is that is
at the root of what many of us believe to be a “crisis” in this Nation of ours.

“Life in America has never been perfect.
In every age, there have been injustices, conspiracies, and controversies.
This is not unique to America; it is part of the human condition.
Yet in America, because we had inherited these noble institutional mechanisms, hope remained.
So long as the republic contained within itself a critical mass of virtuous citizens
committed more to the common good than to privileging any particular sect, group,
or class, then the structures through which we grapple with self-governance could
still yield improvement.”

Today, I have my doubts.

We live in a country that in the span of only a few generations has suddenly lost
any kind of right understanding of objective truth –
as the founding fathers put it in the Declaration of Independence, “…
of the laws of nature and of nature’s God.”
Today, the prevailing understanding of truth is that it is something purely subjective.
This is no small matter.

Today, there has emerged this new idea that you and I supposedly have some kind of
power to create whatever truth we want.
This, of course, not only opens the door to logical self-contradictions,
it very clearly contradicts objective reality itself.
You’re not George Washington even if you think you’re George Washington and
“claim this as your truth.” Simple people see this.
Grounded people see this.
People connected to the earth and nature really see this.

Sophisticates, distracted people, and afflicted people often do not.

What we have is a crisis of truth.

In all human communities, freedom is built upon personal and collective
responsibilities.
These responsibilities always rely upon truth.
Our greatest problem today is not simply that we have lost any meaningful concept of truth.
No, it’s worse than that.
Our greatest problem is that 1) we don’t know that truth is something objective to be discovered;
and 2) we no longer have adequate tools to do the work of discovery.

Let that sink in.

We don’t understand that truth needs to be discovered…
and yet everything of consequence depends on this one thing!

The discovery of truth does not come cheaply.
It requires diligence, patience, nuance, thoughtful consideration, and intellectual
humility.
To actually discover truth and not merely “win” an argument,
it is enormously helpful to be able to presume the good will and sincerity of one’s
discussion partner. But today our public discourse is largely carried out on Twitter.
News and opinion media have become reactionary and overly polemical.
Even our so-called presidential debates take on the form of a cheap tv game show.
How helpful is that?
Complex questions cannot be answered in one minute sound bytes.
It is folly to even try.

A crisis of truth leads to a crisis of love.

The loss of truth has led to the particularly harmful notion that your disagreement
with one of my ideas is somehow disrespectful of me as a human being.
Tragically, in 2019 America, “disagreement” equals “hate” to a lot of people.

But what if you truly love me?

To love is to will the good of another person.
If I hold an opinion that is not rooted in truth,
then that opinion can be quite harmful to me and to the people I influence.
Isn’t the most loving act to help me discover the truth?
Yes, this might require a discussion, debate, or argument.
Prudence dictates that such discussions occur at the right time,
in the right place, and with appropriate people.
But the premise of these kinds of honest disagreements and discussions is love.
To neglect such conversations with people you supposedly love
(or even with the culture at large)
is to not really love and care about them at all.

At the end of this sobering and somewhat frightening discourse,
Bobby is quick to remind us that not all is lost.
This is not a hopeless situation…

Not hopeless because it is in our hopelessness that our real Hope is to be found.
For in that Hope, resides the One true Everlasting Truth.

The Main Crisis on American Independence Day in 2019

Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.
Romans 12:12