Spiritual Reflection - Bettina Network's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Spiritual Reflection’

Come to Jesus! But which one?

Friday, December 7th, 2018

Several times a year I face this conversation.  It comes from living in a diverse community with friends, colleagues, family and acquaintances who question Christianity – especially today with Donald Trump being the hero and the one “evangelical christians” glorify – all in the name of Jesus – or are they talking about ‘jesus’.

It came up when Roy Moore from Alabama was running for office and pushing out for all to see, hear and hopefully believe – his evangelical christianity.  He used his form of this ‘christianity’ to claim he could not have done all the things folks claimed he did because he was a Christian.  He believed in Christ.  He loved Jesus – and on and on it goes.  Problem with that was, I was raised a Christian all of my life and I didn’t recognize anything he said or did as being Christian – let lets put him in the ‘christian’ and ‘jesus’ religion.  And so, I dispensed with that problem – yet again.

In the last undecided Congressional race, watching the people involved comment – the Republican chair talking to Chris Hayes on MSNBC  claimed he did not believe Republican Mark Harris would be involved in the voter fraud scandal in North Carolina because he loved Jesus and wouldn’t do anything against that.  Once again – he loved which one – Jesus or ‘jesus’?

It looks very much as though his choice was ‘jesus’.  Jesus got pushed out the door so he couldn’t witness the scandal.  He will be brought back in when all of that voter fraud stuff is over.

In these United States we have two religions which call themselves “Christian” – because they claim to be followers and believers in “Christ.” That has been true for generations – way back to slavery.  How many slave owners went to Church on Sunday and professed Christ and promised to follow Christs’ teachings only to return home and beat their slaves for one reason or another feeling perfectly justified in the doing and seeing no conflict?

I’ve tried to make peace with this by putting the bad guy “evangelical christians” in small letters along with the “jesus” and “christ” they claim.  But that is not quite satisfying.  That still lets me get upset with all of those ‘christians’ professing their ‘jesus’ because it is too close to mine and I have to answer to others who don’t understand the differences.  I have to justify my Christianity too many times because of them.

Having been raised in the A.M.E, the Congregational and Episcopal Churches all at the same time, with a heavy dose of Catholicism having lived in New Orleans and Downtown at that,  I guess some conflict seems normal to me. (The Intellectuals and the Protestants lived Uptown – the Catholics, the artists, a conglomeration of everyone else lived Downtown).

The conflict between these two totally separate religions, which go by the same name, is way beyond normal and they certainly espouse totally opposite beliefs and theologies.

So maybe its time for a name change!

I remember Jimmy Carter’s dilemma when he started his campaign for President of the United States.  It was noted and reported world wide, but after a time left in the dust.

James Carter was a very strong, believing ‘christian’.  It defined his life, his work, his relationships and everything about his life.

Problem with that was the Church he attended and where he taught Sunday School and (I think) served as an usher was very segregated.  That accorded with his then ‘christian’ religion, but not with the public’s thoughts about Christianity when they heard his religious beliefs discussed.   If Blacks came at all to his Church they had to sit in the back row and mostly they clearly understood they were not welcome.

It was quite something in this country when James Carter realized and rejected that ‘christianity’ and left the Church in which he was raised because of its overt racism – common across the country in such ‘christian’ churches.  He left one religion – or religious denomination – for another.  He left ‘christianity’ and became a Christian.

Todays’ “evangelical christians’ are big supporters of Donald Trump – a sexual assaulter by his own admission.  Interesting thing about that – so are many of the leaders of the ‘evangelical christians’.  Some have been called out and their ‘sins’ exposed, but they are back in the fold doing the same things they did to get expelled and they are supported by the people and their money to whom they preach every Sunday.  I could call them out by name, but there is not enough room on this computer to contain all of them.

All through United States history the claims that this is a ‘christian’ country have been made loud and clear and that declaration used to move aside, push out, treat abusively those who are among the “non-believers”, the atheists, those others who ‘jesus’ supposedly called ‘christians’ to convert.  Many if not most of the abusive, hatred, pain, agony and more inflicted on the world has been done in the name of some religion.  Today and yesterday it was done in the name of this ‘christianity’.  White Privilege – White Nationalists – the KKK and all the others live by and proselytize their ‘christianity’ and use it to justify the evil they do and have done.  That ‘christianity’ has maintained such beliefs and actions because it makes the doers feel as though they are on their gods side – on the side which makes them better than everyone else.  And they define their god as one who supports and has defined and brought into being the beliefs they live by – a theology that only satan could love.

And most especially – have you noticed the class distinctions between these two religions?  “Jesus and the Disinherited” runs through from the beginning until now of the Christian religion.  Foul up everything with even the ability and justification to kill and not see that as a moral flaw of your religion runs through the other – with its striving of its members to be better than; more important than; wealthier than.  Isn’t that the theology which allowed Trump to proclaim to the nation that they should support MbS because after all Saudi Arabia brought us wealth in our interactions with them and isn’t that what is most important?  Dismembering a human being is nothing when compared to the acquisition of the kind of wealth the Kingdom could bring to the United States.  A basic belief of this ‘christian’ religion after the one which claims they are ‘better than”.

Don’t you think it is time for a renaming ceremony?  Time to clearly distinguish between these two religions?  My Christianity certainly does not begin to be anything like that of Roy Moore’s. Et tu?

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What is there left to say!

Saturday, October 27th, 2018

Donald Trump promised a huge push right before the Midterm vote and he has delivered.  It is not possible that he declared himself a Nationalist one day and his people delivered the bombs to even past American presidents the next.  I do not believe in such coincidences.  And to be truthful, neither do you!

The people I feel strongest for are the Trump followers and those who have given their allegiance to Donald Trump.  They are people who were raised to believe they were “better than” those brown and black people who are lazy, shiftless, good for nothing, and must be controlled by those like us or they will simply go off into a lifetime of nothingness, contributing nothing, doing nothing, being nothing.

It is tragic to be in that position and instead of someone like the “Don” giving you a hand-up, to understand and move out of that huge swamp of disinformation, conducts himself and implicates you in such a way that one day, in the not too distant future, you will be destroyed.  You will be in jail for the rest of your life;  – or – you will be marked with the sign of the beast; – or – your religion will be out of reach to you because of the way you have allowed yourself to be played by those at the top who are looking for power, control and money, not God, love, or any of the things your theology puts out there for your faith development.

Listening to the comments of those who believe in Donald Trump, I recall all of those who went before him and gathered people up in a group to support him – his persona, his needs, his ego, his lies.  Where are they now?

They meeting a tragic end.  Germans who followed Hitler were destroyed in the end along with the Fuhrer himself, who committed suicide in a small, dirty, filthy, bunker when the world finally turned against him.

To hear an older gentleman, in an interview, conjecture that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton probably sent those bombs to themselves was heart wrenching.  Bombs, which we now know were neither fake nor a hoax but which could have exploded in the face of whoever met them at the right time.  That older gentleman looked as though he was well into his 70’s or 80’s.  He was old enough to have seen a lot of misery and history yet he learned nothing from all of the years he has been alive except to follow and lie and die for the likes of Donald Trump.  Tragic!

One thing this bomb situation has done – it took Khashoggi off the front pages of the paper and off the news almost entirely.  Given what we have seen Trump do in the past, that looks as though this event was planned to do exactly that.

Trump, working for a regime which killed in such a horrific manner, dismembering the body of the one they chose to kill and then lying about the entire thing is difficult to contemplate even in a “made for television” movie.  Did the killers really think no one would be listening to their actions?  Did they really believe they could do this and get away with it?  Did they expect this attempt to cover-up their actions by Donald Trump?  If they did, the reward to Trump should be huge.  But that means he now takes his place in the line-up of those who have gone before.  The history – the story he has lived and which will be reported for generations to come – not by the media, but by the historians – will outline what happened in total detail because the behind the scenes machinations become very public the further we move away from the time of such happenings.  What Trump did and will do in the future will be uncovered by the historians for his generations to follow and they will have to figure out how to live, in spite of their ancestor.

Does he not realize – can he not see that those who did the killing of Khashoggi at someone else’s bidding are now the people being accused of the murder, out there by themselves being hunted down, going to jail for life themselves or being killed by a religious ritual which demands their lives in an excruciating way for what they have done.  They will have to pay for this crime, while the person who ordered the killing is safely ensconced in luxury moving on to his next deeds and probably the one who will declare their sentence and it probably will not be generous.

Do the people involved in Trump’s cult not know this is the path they will soon travel?  On earth to be scattered across many states, jailed, hunted down, no livelihood, becoming reviled by even some of their own?  Today may look great for them shouting and chanting against those who have done nothing to acquire such horribleness onto themselves, but tomorrow?

The United States FBI investigated and continue to investigate the bombings and have captured one of the people involved.  Fate intervened and the reason he was so quickly captured, the evidence needed for him to be so quickly captured, came from the bombing package sent to Maxine Waters. My grandmother would call that God’s justice.  He will now probably spend the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary – to be joined by others as the investigation progresses.

Life is and can be so beautiful when lived according to God’s laws.  When lived seeing those with whom you share this earth through eyes of love – not hate nor bigotry nor living it out of the need to control God’s people separating them from one another according to your needs – blacks and browns on one side; women and children on another; white males over all and controlling.

After the bombings we will be treated to the spectacle of Trump having some 800 troops aiming guns and other such restraints at the several thousands of people who are destitute and fleeing serious severe oppression looking for a better life, coming to these United States to turn themselves in at the border asking for refuge.  He has publicized their journey and turned them into a serious marauding crowd of people coming to these United States to terrorize.  Is that to hide the fact that this is what his presidency has been all about – the domestic terrorism of the citizens of the United States?  He has certainly done a great job of that and he continues with help from an amazing group of people.  I look at them and wonder were they raised in sin or has that come about because of their primary need to be “better than”, to earn more money than, to be more important than, to have control over_____ something! Grasping for all of those things which are short lived and which deteriorate and turn to dust. Those things which make one wonder when old age comes why did I take that route?  Why did I do those things?  What do I have left?  How could I have missed what this world really is all about!  How could I have screwed up my life so badly!

What will they do, where will they go when Trump is no longer president and has been taken down and indicted because of the incredible way he has gone about living his life.

Isn’t that what this is all about at this moment?  Donald Trump doing everything he can to call together people who are weak in morals and character to stand in front of him when the bullets from Mueller’s investigation start flying and he has to face his actions?  Hasn’t he called these people together to get them to sacrifice themselves, their lives and their families to attempt to save a man Satan successfully recruited generations ago?  Before he was even in his mother’s womb?

Maybe we should feel more sympathy for Donald Trump.  A third generation American trying to live down his grandfather’s reputation and lack of morals having come to this country broke, no education, no training who built a hotel and apparently turned it into a brothel making his money on the backs of women.  And his father’s reputation of having built a fortune partnering with the mafia to build his construction business.  And Donald Trump who built on his family’s past lives moving in the direction he was trained to go with his Construction, Casino and other businesses turning to so many kinds of activities which hurt thousands of people now making one last try for power and control over so he can experience what he came to expect from his upbringing.

It is a tragic story!  The extreme of the tragedy is that he raised his children to walk in his footsteps.  He doesn’t have many more years to go in this life.  His children, however, might have decades and with what he has done to them and their lives they will be walking a road filled with the tragedy and history he has left for them to inherit.

An American tragedy!

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The Bettina Oracle takes us back to the future with Donald Trump!

Saturday, April 14th, 2018

It is beyond belief that we in the United States are so enmeshed in evil.  Are we really so totally corrupt and from the head?

There has always been an evil side or evil group in these United States.  As you trace our history you find even from the beginning when those who first arrived, who were welcomed by the ‘natives’ – the peoples living in these United States – our history shows we responded to that welcome with evil which finally led to the Trail of Tears.  That kind of evil is still practiced against that original group living in this country.  It is still going on today.  With that unrelieved history we know there is something very wrong.

When a group, too lazy to do their own work, starts roaming the earth and brings back human beings from Africa bound into slavery and tied for generations to do the work of this evil group under the conditions of slavery and against their will the evil continues.

When so much death and destruction happens even after that and continues into today something is very wrong.

There were massacres all during slavery as many tried to escape.  After slavery there were massacres as groups of Africans, supposedly freed slaves, were bound and kept in slavery and slaughtered if they refused.  Communities – such as in Oklahoma – were massacred.

Skipping a lot because it begins to sound like “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” – an unrelieved book documenting the suffering of American Indians – and coming into today we have almost daily shootings to kill people at random.  Shootings that our laws uneffective against the guns do not stop and which brought our young people, our teenagers and younger into the conflict for the second time in modern history.  I was a part of the first bringing in of such young people to try to mitigate the unrelieved suffering inflicted upon Americans by evil groups of people and which was temporarily successful until this new age started.

We now have billionaires persecuting and oppressing others with the consequent growth of homelessness at disgraceful levels and the attempts of the few to stem and stop that growth not showing results.  We are fighting each other because the rich want to be richer; the not so rich want to be really rich and supports those they want to be like hurting themselves and their families in the process.  It is a crazy environment.  Speaking of which we have even disrupted and are destroying our own environment in which we have to live and breathe and can’t survive if climate change continues on the road we have set for it.  AND in that process we still have that evil group denying and trying to destroy those working to stop climate change – denying climate change because it means their march towards the riches they want projected by their greed will be disrupted if we work to stop or even slow down climate change.

And today – at the head of this we have #evilTrump – a president with the story following him of “golden showers”.  A president who, it is claimed, had prostitutes pee on one another to foul the bed the African American president and his wife slept in when they visited Russia.  Try to depict that as anything other than extreme viciousness and evil.  And he is the one leading this nation.  He is the one the White Evangelicals have chosen as their political leader.  He is the one they raise up when they call on Jesus in their Churches to protect them and him from who – from those actually living out the Gospel?  And that ‘golden showers’ story is one of his lesser deeds, which he denies and claims he is a “germaphobe” and couldn’t be involved in such.  However, the claim isn’t that the pee touched him, but that he was the one who had the prostitutes do the peeing on each other while he got his jollies from watching.  Isn’t that ultimate evil?   Nothing was claimed that they peed on him or even sprayed him with their pee.  And the white evangelicals will continue to hold him up and give reasons as to why they feel he is doing gods work!  In that context god must be spelled with the small ‘g’ because it is idolatrous and worship by infidels who have put up their god to gain the ascendency over the God they claim to worship. It is foul – evil – sin – the work of who they call Satan. Satan – walking freely around the evangelical churches; taking shelter in their meetings; dictating what is said and acceptable in their conferences and gatherings; holding up other men just like this head of the United States who have covered their sins so they can hold up and claim him.

It is not to be believed.  And yet, he was elected president.  Is this God’s justice from all that has happened in the past?  Does this president have the 666 – the mark of the beast on him as restitution for all we have brought about in these United States when the ground was given to all of us to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God?

Something is very wrong here and I don’t see us stopping, changing, or making this better.  I see “President” Trump appointing Cambridge Analytica’s successor to Steve Bannon in the form of John Bolton – isn’t that how evil continues?  When one person becomes too toxic replace him with another of the same ilk supported by the same group with both totally involved with Cambridge Analytica.  Not even hidden, but so sure of themselves that exchange is totally out in the open.

I see all of the evil forces coming out stronger doing their best to swamp those trying to right these wrongs and I see a totally foul president still in power and still moving to cause as much upheaval as he can.  And I hear him still being led by and managed by  Russia as an asset of Vladimir Putin.  What is wrong with you America?  Are you so scared that the increase and almost majority of brown people in this world scared you to the point of needing to go crazy in an evil way to prevent this?  Are you afraid when the majority of people in this world are those who were the minority that they will take vengeance against you?  Or are you so stuck in being “better than”.  With your claimed superiority threatened you will do anything to prevent becoming equal too all other human beings?  Have you noticed the “Russia” to which Trump seems to be promised – it is a white nation!  Immigration the way Trump is dealing with it has as its goal to make America White Again as an ally and cousin to this white nation.  And then what will they unleash as they combine with other such white nations?  They won’t be allied with France or England or other such becoming “brown” or already “brown” nations.

I guess you don’t realize that all of these “brown” people are your children?  Black and White  coming together produces Brown!

I don’t know what to make of this – except that it is evil personified!  And roaming America freely!  Like everybody else outside of the circle of evil, we have so much to say, so much to share, so much to give and instead this ugly stifles everything good and it is spreading not shrinking.  What are you going to do about all of this America? Sit by and hope it goes away?  Claim we are the world’s greatest nation and sit back and watch it all go up in fire and smoke with our president disproving that on an hourly basis?

It is time to choose – Good or Evil!  To sit back and do nothing is not acceptable.  Either you totally accept the evil that is Donald Trump or you reject it and move it aside – there is no alternative.  Those who do nothing are as doomed as those who do evil!

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.
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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

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The Manchurian U. S. Administration (cont’d)

Thursday, March 15th, 2018

President Trump has made it clear, on a daily basis, for all of us to see and learn from – one can live in a bigoted society and get feel goods from puffing yourself up to believe you are better than or you can live in a democracy – your choice.  You cannot, however, have both.

My guess is that Donald Trump has made a deal with Putin and Russia – he becomes U. S. President and helps Putin carry out his goals for these United States; Putin gets behind his candidacy and does everything possible to make that happen; and in return the “Don” gets his Trump Tower in Moscow at the end of his term(s) as president.

What does the “Don” have to do?  Take down U. S. sanctions against Russia; promote Putin as this wonderful leader and one we should befriend; carry out whatever side actions Putin lets the “Don” know are in Putin’s best interest and which he needs the U. S. to do immediately; and say nothing untoward – negative – or demeaning against Putin or Russia.

From where I sit, Trump is doing an incredible job of following through with his part of this apparent deal with Putin and is doing everything he can to turn the United States into a very autocratic, authoritarian, mean-spirited country.  He is following in the foot steps of the worse autocrats in history.  He is at the beginnings of that process, but he is moving quite fast and has accomplished much.

He has just moved a woman into the position of head of the Central Intelligence Agency.  Isn’t it wonderful that for the first time a woman has headed that agency.  However, on the other hand she is the one who headed turning a part of the Intelligence Agency into a very murderous, torture chamber for no good reason since it has been known for some time that torture does not get the results expected.

All of the laws which guaranteed a democracy are either being reversed or other laws are being added which make this a very ugly, fascist country.  The worst of our history is being replayed in the immigrant area.  We have been through refusing entry into this country of Chinese.  After the Chinese sweat blood and gave their lives to build at great cost to themselves and their families – our railway system and other low level, dangerous jobs they were forced to take to survive.  The Irish went through a horrible time complete with “No Irish need Apply”, amongst other denigrations and demeaning and horrifying times, some of which still exist today.  And on and on and on until you come to slavery of Africans.  I have to add Africans here because we do still engage in enslaving women in this country.

The ethics and moral values which so many families try so hard to pass along to their children have been short circuited by Mr. Trump and his administrations’ examples.  One can see the hand of one of Mr. Trump’s mentors – Roy Cohen – who in spite of being dead, still lives. Lessons the “Don” learned include the biggy – don’t ever admit failure.  If you have tried something and it fails, claim it as a great success, speak about your successes loudly so that people hearing will be swayed to actually think of where you failed as being a place where you actually were great.  I think Mr. Trump has forgotten as he lives out these lessons learned at Mr. Cohen’s knee that Roy Cohen died broke, friendless and living in squalid circumstances.

Mr. Trump seems to revel in his being president as the return of the “Alpha Male” – who is always at the top of society along with a few males not quite as great but walking with him as they make changes to the society in which they increasingly control everything.  As he moves along in his presidency along with his administration and the criminal enterprise we call the RNC, it is clear that they share some common beliefs:  1) the world’s rules, which must be obeyed, are those which keep men – white, Northern European ancestry men – firmly in control. 2) the women you select be careful to insure that they have been brain washed and are trying to and need to be better than when in actuality they serve the purpose of screwing men for the man’s enjoyment and are painfully screwed by the men for the man’s advancement. 3) Maintain the male god who is the keeper of this culture and of the rules by which we all live – rules which are there to keep men firmly in control.  The rules of the world have clearly developed to insure the total control of white, Northern European ancestry men over all.  4) Keep a watchful eye to make sure the developments and perceived advancements of science, religion, business, art are all led by and attributed to those same men.  Where it looks as though that is slipping, keep the young and the greedy roaming around to steal the advancements, ideas, vision of those non-white peoples.  Even some who look like friends – Al Gore claiming he was responsible for the internet when in fact that was a woman; Madam C. J. Walker who invented an incredibly profitable marketing system which she used to market hair products for African women and that marketing system’s invention and development were credited to men; and on and on it goes.

Where is the hope in all of this? Is there any light breaking into this world as it seems to be spiraling down into the depths of hell?  Especially since Donald Trump could not have done all of this alone.  There was a lot of history which preceded his presidency and a lot of people tuned into what he is doing and wants to do in the future.  Some of those people are ones who would be demeaned and destroyed if what they were working towards were to succeed and become a part of the structure of this world – these people seem totally oblivious to the fact that the success of their efforts will fall hardest onto them.

All is not yet lost, however.  We see light breaking in with the children –  During the Galilean ministry, Jesus’ disciples came saying ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”  And Jesus called a child and set the child in the midst of them and said, “Verily I say unto you, except you be converted and become as children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.  Whosoever therefore humbles themselves as this child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  And who shall receive one such child in my name receives me.  But who shall offend one of these it is better that millstones hang around their necks and drowns them in the depth of the sea.

However, that light is being mitigated by the darkness we see spreading as the rich become richer and the poor become desperate.  Especially as the rich see the poor as being poor because of some kind of moral deficiency when the moral deficiency is that of the billionaires whose greed keeps them from seeing clearly.  We move further apart as the riches of the world become more unevenly distributed, especially since it is not possible for one person to legitimately be worth billions while others live on the street.  That is happening to our world and it is reflected in our politics.  We want to insure that this trend continues because many of the poor are joining with the rich in bringing this about because they expect one day to be rich themselves and they want the kind of world that will shore them up and be prejudiced in their favor when their ship of gold comes in.

The work of the world is to take seriously Isaiah and all the other scripture writings that say in essence –

“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,

and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;

and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together;

and a child shall lead them.”

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

Immeasurable Suffering!

Friday, February 16th, 2018

by: Marceline Donaldson

There is no pain like the pain of losing a child – even a temporary loss, let alone a permanent loss by death.  The parents and families of the young people killed in Parklands and the families of the teachers, coaches and staff are all constantly in our prayers.

Our children are precious to us no matter how great or handicapped we are at showing it.  They are the means by which we achieve eternity and whether we do it consciously or not we give to them all of who we are and what we have.

To know that your child’s last minutes on earth were spent being terrorized, we are never the same.  Where does the ‘peace that passes all understanding’ ever come from in our lives after that – even for a few blessed seconds.

To know that it was a child killing children makes the deed no less painful nor does it make it one we will ever forget or ever be able to remember without the pain surrounding the memory also coming back to terrorize us bringing the grief back fresh and new.

To know that the child killing our children was taken up in a time of his greatest need by a group of paramilitary white supremacist bigots and put into training so he could learn to use the guns he used to kill our children and his peers makes our shock and confusion even greater.

Instead of killing those he was being trained to hate and revile and look on as less than and needing such termination, he turned on his own and became a part of the many white on white crime sprees that have been happening around these United States.

Why did he turn to white supremacists in his time of greatest need and why, in the end, did he turn on them and against them by turning their theories – their politics – their religion against them!

We know very little about the details of this young man’s life – this 19 year old, not yet out of his teen years with his mind not quite developed into the adult mind he would have in years to come.  We do know he was without a father for many years and his mother died in November of 2017 and we know he was alone.  Others may have stepped in to temporarily bridge that gap, but there are few people who know the depths of that kind of aloneness in a society of plenty where being “better than” on so many levels is that to which most of us aspire.  One of the greatest in the one upsmanship that we practice is who are or were our parents.  We learn to hide our parents if we achieve beyond their class and so they become an embarrassment or their existence amongst our friends and peers “outs” us for being less than we pretend to be.  To have no parents and no family puts us on that slippery road to homelessness in the future if we are not really ‘exceptional’ and just ordinary like most of us.  When we slip there is no one there to catch us or prevent us from sliding into the muck.

Parklands, Florida is a place – or was a place – that felt “better than” as a community because it was what – all white with very few exceptions? mostly upper economic families? parents raising their own children without many one parent homes, especially the kind with women alone raising children struggling just to keep food on the table let alone keeping a table? without the stigma of having “bad children”; “those ghetto types of thugs roaming the neighborhoods”; – I could go on but you know the stereotype without even having it outlined for you.

In Parklands, as we read in the media, when children questioned their parents and were afraid to go to school – one report tells of a child who wanted to be home schooled because of her fear – the answer was “you don’t have to be afraid, we don’t live in that kind of neighborhood – we live in a good neighborhood.”  And the child questioning and everyone reading that account knows what that meant.  That is a part of what we have constructed as the reality of our lives.  That is what this shooting destroyed for Parklands.

As we go back over these school shootings and the school violence we have been experiencing, we see that it has happened in mostly white, mostly upper-class neighborhoods.  We have been experiencing white on white crime with great regularity.

Why!

Is it because when truth and the reality of who they really are hits,  young minds can’t contain or deal with that explosion of those truths and their anger leads them to using the weapons of war to let out their anger – against their own who deceived them!

This young man faced a life which looked hopeless!  With the death of his mother he was one of those society discards and blames for being in the position he sees himself facing over the years.  When the reality – the truth of who he actually was in this society hit and the lies told to keep people like him under control for the rest of society – when that reality hit him, was the only power he had over his life the one he had been taught by his white paramilitary friends?  Kill them all before they kill you?  Except his explosion was in the truth of who “they” were to him!  His peers!  The innocents who didn’t create his life as it was rolling out – the innocents who were as trapped in their existence as he was in his – those young innocent children living the same myth which upheaveled his life.

Hardest to hear throughout all of this, for me, has been the teachers, parents, bystanders who described the other children going to school in Parklands who were achieving such great things.  Those children who wanted to be doctors, lawyers, who had done projects so outstanding – and on and on many of them went – apparently trying to patch and heal their community by patching and healing the mythology under which they lived their lives and from which they took their identity.  Parklands is really a safe community and full of these really great people raising children who would live on to become leaders of society.  This is just an aberration caused by someone who didn’t ‘belong’.

Amazingly, that is the pattern of what happened in other communities.  Colorado comes to mind with the two young boys who were so outside of what was the norm in their community and so rejected by their peers and others that their explosion when the myth was exploded instead of them and their reality exposed to them – it was more than their young minds could contain and we had yet another school shooting and massacre.

I am sure this is not what those in such extreme pain want to hear.  Nor those who are trying to make sense of this want to put in their minds and hearts to help them through a really difficult time.  But, sometimes, the best place to start to heal is with truth.  Truth replaces grief and moves us to do great things.

For the truth of life in Parklands and the rest of America to take hold and spread is the best thing that could happen to all of us.

When one of our own human community loses father and mother they become our children and our responsibility.  The truth is that does not happen.  Except for a very few they become weights on the society for whom our Congress people and president forever try to speak in ways to convince the rest of us that those so orphaned are responsible for their own plight and probably the cause of the situation in which they find themselves.

For truth and love to break into a society what an incredible gift.

Would that begin to happen in Parklands, Florida what a gift to their parents the life and death of their children would be.  How meaningful would the lives of those young martyrs be if what happens out of their life and death is their opening a door wide to the truth and love that we so sorely need and so strongly fight to keep out and keep away from.  Grief can break down barriers because in it we begin to question our lives and how we have made the choices which brought us to this place of grief.

To see the people around us as fully human and truly divine is such a gift.  Can’t we accept it – live through it – give it to others.

There are not many times in life when such is possible.  This is one and it was given to us by our children.  Don’t throw it away.  Don’t reason it out of existence.  Use it to live less in the mythology that is our life and more into the reality of who we all really are.

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Personification of Evil

Tuesday, October 31st, 2017

BY: Marceline Donaldson

I heard a sermon a few weeks ago preached by a person who could be called a politician.   He tried to recast these current political events as purely political and not evil.  I should have been amazed, but I simply wondered why I had chosen that church on that particular day to hear such a message. It was christianity being preached with a small “c”.  The kind most of us practice, which allows us to keep silent when we need to speak the truth. to no longer even know what is truth and to obfuscate when we need to speak and act out of the clarity of our convictions.   To go along to get along because our sense of moral outrage and correctness has been numbed by our need for that which will not satisfy who we really are……

My biggest disappointments in life have been those times when a clear lack of a clear and sure moral compass, when it was most needed, has been displayed by the society in which I live; those times when I have been taken back to a parallel time – like now – to the times of McCarthyism – which shows we have learned negative lessons from history.   We interpret what we see “through a glass darkly”and think we are seeing the new heaven.  We seem to need to be “important”; to be “accepted”; to not be pushed out of our position in life that we have achieved by our “striving” and for which we have paid a heavy price.  We will sacrifice the very ground on which we stand for those goals.

Remember Joseph McCarthy – remember the Rosenberg’s – remember all of the people whose lives were sacrificed at the same altar that those historical times are now bringing back to us via those who inherited the tools of evil that existed then and are using them today.

I have not been surrounded, most of my life by those society calls  murderers, thieves, rapists, liars.  I have been surrounded by “strivers”.  And now, with Donald Trump as president, it is clear this country is full of  such “strivers”.  How few have come out to speak truth.  How even fewer have called out the evil being constantly pumped into this society.  How many could withstand the onslaught that comes from being cut loose from your moorings because you took that one brave moment and spoke truth, -yet some still do.  Why would speaking truth cut you off and cause a huge upheaval in your life? Why would it not bring you the status of hero?  What it does bring to those with that strong moral compass is very indicative of the moral health of the society in which we live.

When and if you do take a stand in this current society, those who connect to you, who take some of their identity from being your friend, who see you as a part of their group and therefore as a part of them become threatened by you and can only recoup by trying to sink you to show how unlike you they are and how unchanged they are and how they are still willing to lie, cheat, steal, oppress in the name of whoever is in power – and that can even includes members of your family.

Now – today – you have the chance to reform.  It is time to come out and condemn bullying – lying – cheating – stealing – oppressing others for your own advantage – in other words, you have a chance today to speak the truth about these United States and about the world in which we live.  If you don’t, that world will be changed and not for the better.

We elected a man as president of these United States who is a bully.  A man who lies, cheats, steals, and who will use whatever he can to be the most powerful person in the world.  And when I say “we” – Russia may have manipulated for him to gain more votes and put their strength behind helping him become president of these United States, but millions of plain, ordinary Americans voted for him.  And why?  Because he promised he would single you out and make you and your kind “better than”?  That he would maintain and increase the racism, sexism, homophobia, and all the rest that has existed in these United States for generations? And in return you would turn a blind eye to his robbing you blind because you need that “better than” status more than you need a fair and equitable country in which to live?  Because you need to know that the brown-skinned person across the street is less than you?  Because you can brag about living in a country which excludes and diminishes those whose religion is different from yours? And on and on and on because that is the only thing Trump has promised you and the only thing he has delivered to you and will continue to deliver to you as long as he is president.  He has promised to deliver evil!  He has promised to accept you and your contribution to his administration if you engage in evil for his sake!  He has made all kinds of promises which all come down to increasing the wealth of the wealthy; increasing the power of the powerful; …………………..(.add your own comments to finish this sentence.)

I was totally appalled at the progress of a part of his entourage.  There was the ‘First Lady’, Melania, at a school talking to young impressionable children about “bullying”.  And what were they doing?  Looking in their laps at pictures of this First Lady – nude and half nude – https://www.bettina-network.com/blog/archives/2572  – prancing around airplanes in practically nothing – lounging on beds in pictures that some sex magazines would not print without blurred spots?  I am sure you know the scenario.  If you don’t, take a look at the pictures in the above link which were out in public view long before Trump ran for president and which circulated the country during his campaign.  And still you voted to bring this family into the White House as role models for your children and mine.

She went into the schools talking about bullying.  With what credibility?  Was she bringing the issue up before our children so they would understand and avoid such tactics or was she teaching them hypocrisy and how to do one thing – live one kind of life – and come out in the light of day talking another.  A woman who lives daily with a bully and has supported him with her words and actions.  This is who you wanted talking to your children about the evils of “bullying”?  One who used a bully to move herself up to billionaire status and has arrived as First Lady of these United States by marrying and tolerating and promoting a bully while doing whatever she needs to do to keep herself sane?  This is your role model who you parade through your schools for your children to see and listen to while they ogle her half-nude pictures?

How the mighty have fallen.

Who was Donald Trump’s mentor – besides his father who clearly was a bigot and was arrested at a KKK demonstration – try reading this New York Times article – https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/us/politics/donald-trump-roy-cohn.html

Mentored by Roy Cohn – a notorious and feared New York attorney who was Joseph McCarthy’s right hand man.  Who helped to bring much pain and suffering to many in these United States who the McCarthy hearings accused of being “Communist”.- Mr. Trump has now taken one of his mentors tactics and has shown he has no loyalties nor anything approaching a substantial set of foundational ethics by now moving completely to the other side with those same “Communists” apparently having been used to get him elected president of these United States.

It is not accidental that Gorka brought up the Rosenberg’s in his attempt to destroy Hillary Clinton.  Destroying the Rosenberg’s and sending them to the electric chair was a part of the tactic that promoted Cohn and his crowd and is the inheritance of Trump and his crowd.  If at once you succeed you don’t have to try again you only have to push ahead and move the world into the image that most lets you live like Vladimir Putin, only without the downside Putin now faces.  And now comes a reliving of that time, only this time with Trump as saint paul, Cohn in the jesus seat and Gorka and his crowd working to bring in a 2017 form of McCarthyism to project and increase their money and power and the American people allowing all of it to happen as long as their jobs, assets, status as “better than” are safe.

It is time to wake up America and live out your claimed beliefs.  Live out your Constitution.  Put the quality of life – the equality of all – ability to provide for everyone without having a billionaire crowd growing at the expense of the homeless and others on the margins about to become homeless.

All of the moneys being spent on the foolishness we are now seeing acted out in front of us by White Male Northern European ancestry Americans needs to stop.  Oops, not quite.  We do have some hangers-on from other groups to disprove that rule – let’s not forget the African American Ben Carson, and others like him. Strivers all!

It is time for the windows and doors of this country to be thrown open and the fresh air of humanity, compassion, equality, love, grace, and all the rest be let in and not be closed off and only allowed to a small and smaller group.  The thugs and criminals who keep this country in chains are not who you want in charge.

We need an America whose soil does not grow and support and strengthen such people.  I don’t know what happened to them that they pursue such  a way of life, but that really does not matter.  What matters is their choices in life were evil. The lifestyle that they chose is evil.  Their ability to corrupt others is evil.  They need to be called out on all of it and removed.  The hate they are spewing – the choices they are making ——

It is the personification of evil and different from the sermon I heard a few Sundays ago about labeling this “politics” and not “evil”.  It was certainly not a Christian sermon – it was a sermon from the soul of a religion spreading very quickly and calling itself “christianity”.  It is the call to follow this god they are promoting as “christ” and ignoring the evil intrinsic to this kind of “politics.”  The small letters are not typos – they are intentional.

Stand up and be counted here America.  This is your country and you need to take it back and put it in the light.  Take it out of the darkness settling on all things American and with that darkness spreading fast.  The same group which promoted and supported Jos McCarthy and his brand of anti-communism is around Trump.  Their heirs are alive and well and trying to take this country down the same road.

You don’t have much time because one defense Trump has is to start World War III and I have no doubt he is capable and would rather see that happen than to traverse the road he set for himself, which will be hard, painful, a total embarrassment and payment for his past sins in the public and corporate arenas.

We will be in the middle of nuclear warfare without even knowing what happened.  You will be standing in the street with your skin turning to mush and your eyes destroyed and your entire body in excruciating pain because when you had the chance to stand in the street for justice – for equality – to be passionate about a political experiment called the American Way you were among the missing.  You went about your day as normal, you did not want to be involved.   You wanted others to stand up and take the pain of working hard and sacrificing their lives so you could live in peace, harmony and without extreme environmental changes and so your children could grow up and replace the Trumpians and McCarthyism.

How is that not spreading and being a part of the same evil you are seeing played out in the news everyday?  Everyone has a part.  Choose yours wisely because your day of reckoning is coming also.  Remember the story in scripture about the sheep and the goats?  Each day you choose which one you are becoming and each day you take on more of the characteristics of your choice. – and at some point it is too late to change and make another choice – you and yours simply will have to live with the choice you make today, no matter how small.

This is not political – this is evil!!!!

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

The Last Word: Stay Woke – A Memorial to Dick Gregory

Wednesday, August 30th, 2017

By:  Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.           
August 23, 2017

“It is through our struggles that we gain victories”

Stay Woke are words to remember from my best friend–the one and only Dick Gregory. Who in Black America (or America for that matter) hasn’t heard of Dick Gregory?  I certainly had known him for years before he left us a few days ago. I didn’t meet him in person until 1986 when Congressman Mervyn Dymally invited him to come to my home state in Louisiana while I was a candidate for the U.S. Congress in the old Gillis Long district.  Mr. Gregory spoke for a fundraising event for my campaign, and he didn’t ask for a dime–not even his airline ticket.  That was impressive because others required all kinds of things, including what they wanted in their hotel rooms to drink while there!

After the campaign was over, I moved to Washington, DC, and one day out of the clear blue, he was stranded in Baltimore and needed to get back to DC that night. I guess my reputation for helping anybody I could was out there already and he had heard about it!  He called me and asked if I would travel to Baltimore to get him; I did.  We became friends on the ride back to DC, and that has never changed. He began bringing over veggie burgers and cooking them while inviting friends by to see how great they tasted. I met so many wonderful people through him.

He soon became known as my best friend and running buddy.  We attended many events together, but the term running buddy came from the fact that we’d run on every track we could find, run through Rock Creek Park or get up at 2 am to test new health equipment about which somebody had told us.  I wasn’t crazy about getting up that early in the morning, so I wound up buying a lot of the strange equipment so that we could use it anytime! Consequently, my home became filled with all kinds of exercise and health gadgets.  He introduced me to just about every vitamin ever made. At that time, I had a health products business so it fit right in with what he was advocating.

He saw the thousands of books at my place, so he decided to add to my collection!  Aside from introducing me to his huge required newspaper and magazine reading, he began buying two of every book he thought was worthy of reading. That was a lot! The reason for buying the second copy was for me to read to him–sometimes for hours where I literally had to prop my eyes open to finish books late at night.

The second reason was his frequent travels, and since I had every book he had, he could call me to jog his memory on certain information.  Since he had no concept of time, he often called from other time zones in other states and countries so that I could get out of bed, go downstairs and find what he needed. He also wanted to see every movie of significance, so it was nothing for me to be picked up to hang out with him for two or three movies in a single night. I had my first arrest for a good cause with him. We were joined by George Clooney, Martin King, III, Ben Jealous and others. As a lawyer, I was called on frequently not to go to jail, but to bail him out of jail for protesting about various wrongs, so my arrest record for picketing is not nearly as long as his.

Ultimately, we began participating in so many marches and protests that we made signs for numerous causes and kept them in the trunk of my car so that we could stop and participate with others as we were passing by.

I will fast forward to 2011 where we witnessed the British Petroleum Gulf Oil Spill in Louisiana. Many under-served people were not getting paid for their losses, but big companies were. A group led by Dr. Arthur Rocker, met at my home and we discussed what we would do about it. situation.  Immediately Dick and I agreed to join the cause.  We made several trips to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Texas advising people of their rights to be made whole.  We picketed BP.  We went to London, England to try to seek relief for the under-served.  We picketed the BP offices there while not even knowing the laws related to picketing.

We returned to the U.S., met with and picketed more BP offices in the U.S. At the time Dick left us on Saturday, BP has yet to pay poor and marginalized people. Despite the fact that it is impossible to fill his shoes, my last words to him were promises to carry on his legacy of service to our people and finish the projects we’d started together. Dr. Rocker and I will be returning to that Gulf Coast battlefield in a few days and we’ll carry Dick’s spirit with us.

In honor of all Dick Gregory has done for us, let us honor his memory by practicing some of the things he taught us.  He wanted us to Stay Woke and not believe everything we see!  He wanted us to know that all things are not what they appear to be.  He wanted us to rid ourselves of anger, fear, hatred and jealousy.  He wanted us to know that love is much more powerful than hate. I had the last word with him on last Saturday night after Lil and his family said their goodbyes. I could never fill his shoes because they are much too big, but I had a talk with him and promised to do my best to do the things I know he would do if he were here.  That is how I will honor my friend, the one and only, Richard Claxton Gregory from whom I learned so much.

 
E. Faye Williams, MPA, PhD, D.Min, Esq.
President/CEO, National Congress of Black Women, Inc. 
1250 4th Street, SW, Suite WG-1, Washington, DC 20024 
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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

 

 

Our Oracle speaks about Trump, Pence et al…

Friday, May 19th, 2017

We just couldn’t resist.  With everyone chiming in about all of this we thought it was time for our oracle to speak:

“What a grand mess!  Developed from human greed and the need for power to bring about a world in which one can wallow instead of being industrious about and responsible for the welfare of others.  This is all coming from a need to feel better than other humans instead of working hard to follow the laws of love.  In other words, laziness of the soul is what has produced this mess.

Where to begin!  Amazingly there is no static surrounding this so it is coming in clear!  It is a rare time to see the future with such clarity and beauty.

I shall begin with – of course – Donald Trump, the great man, currently being used by so many forces of evil.  How did he become so powerful!

Remember when Donald Trump was so viciously pursuing Barack Obama with his campaign of lies about Obama not being a citizen of the United States and so he was not a legitimate president?  Too bad Trump could not use his genius in the service of good, but put it at the disposal of the forces of evil.  He pursued Barack Obama relentlessly all throughout Obama’s campaign for the presidency and throughout his years as president.  That was a ‘dog whistle’.  Trump was calling together those who were weak in their identity; who had problems with their inner being and needed something to be able to feel good about themselves.  He called together those who chose to slide by in this world not doing their work, but putting bigotry at the center of their being. The very hard work of building their identity on the solid rock foundation of love for all humans is what makes one pursue love instead of tyranny and evil.  Trump unveiled for those so insecure the beginnings of how they could get rid of this threat building – an African American man as president threatening to take down what generations of evil had built – this threat to all like him who were insecure in their personhood.  And when a woman threatened to follow this African American man, the last bits and pieces of this evil were being threatened with being reduced to nothing.   It was too much – the last straw – this was not something evil in the world would or could tolerate and so these negative, ugly, fascist forces were called into action as Donald Trump’s “army”..

Donald J. Trump put together those who responded to his ‘dog whistle’ with  those who chose the path of ‘power over others’ to create a campaign to make himself President of the United States.  He wanted to be the most powerful person in the world and was willing to sacrifice the small bits of goodness he still had inside of himself for the position.

One can gain that position by going the route of working to build a better world for all or one can gain that position by taking the route of calling together all of the evil in the world to create you as this human who is above all other humans and that is what appealed to Trump.  Trump saw the path of evil as a much clearer path – one far more suited to his souls laziness and he saw the same laziness in others – so he joined with those establishing and who had already established fascist dictatorships around the world and promised his fealty as one of them and to be their chief supporter- and what they have not yet realized – their leader.

So, Donald J. Trump had the building blocks for his presidency – the combination of the bigots with the fascists. A fairly traditional partnership known to and comfortable in this world.  Mostly these were one and the same, but sometimes he had to meld the two to get the support he needed.  Chief among his supporters was VP.

At the same time Trump knew he could constantly refresh his position and he put aside many ‘dog whistles’ which he could use when one began to get old and the dogs stopped responding.  The latest one was his statement about Barack Obama having him surveyed with listening devices in his beloved Trump Tower.  It was plausible to many because of many of the people living in Trump Tower.  One could make a case for any one of them being “surveilled.”

With this as his base, Trump has accomplished much for his side.  Human weakness has played into his plans and given him the kind of support he never expected to have.  Those who wanted the same things, but were not clear enough in their pursuit of evil to make the kind of sacrifices Trump was willing to make and, in fact, has made.  These were chief among his supporters –  those who wanted power in their own small piece of the world;  those who wanted to be close to power serving its needs were in the mix;  those who wanted money to be able to do things they hadn’t been able to do before they promised fealty to evil  –  and so many more.

We can see the result.  Especially this past week with the violence in the streets of Washington, D. C., apparently caused by the evil emanating from Turkey to let the world know that such thuggery, such destruction of the human spirit by physical means, was clearly now acceptable in the United States and would be rewarded.  Those objecting and trying to stop such displays and horribleness would be put down and pushed aside in Trump’s world.

This was a week of Trump parading his fascist-style dictator friends in and through the White House – that beacon of democracy – and across the pages of the media to show the world what he expected to be his grand entrance into world domination, giving out the images to the world that America has left its democracy behind and is entering into Trump and his friend’s fascist state.  No more democratic-republic.    Let those following the law of love shutter – Trump appears to have won!  His hand shakes and smiles and friendly bantering with the fascist-dictators of the world and those who hope to be fascist-dictators as opposed to his coldness and ugly attitude toward those who came to visit during previous times who are working to build a more democratic world.  All very telling.

Well, not so fast.  Apparently, there are still vestiges in the United States of some form of goodness.  The rule of law, which we shouldn’t really espouse, but which shows up in times of need when we seem to be failing in other ways, has shown its head and is beginning the take down of Trump.  Well, maybe the rule of law will suffice until the rule of love can become totally entrenched.

Now those who were choosing evil have to stop and breathe.  What now!  It seemed clear that their path to importance – to moving up another step on the ladder of financial worldly success has been changed.  Maybe it is time to wait to see what will happen.  Will evil continue to succeed via Trump?  Or has something else entered the picture.

Certainly Pence – Trump’s major ally in this drama – is not the answer.  He has shown himself able to lie as easily as Trump.  His way to the top, however, is a little different.  He is moving ahead with his inner soul trappings as one of the pharisees (a person distinguished by strict observance of the traditional and written law, and commonly held to have pretensions to superior sanctity. a self-righteous person; a hypocrite) only beginning to show, but being exposed ever so slightly is as good as being totally stripped and laid bare.

In all of this. good eventually triumphs’  How fast or how slowly this happens depends upon where you are in your life and in how much or how little of yourself you are contributing to either promoting Trump or working for and promoting the goodness in life.  But even so there is a ways to go.  Follow Trump’s trip abroad very closely – it holds the answers to the questions you have and will expose many for who they actually are in this drama – both those at home and those abroad.

We don’t need this drama to see that all of you, in everything you do, clearly give out hints and behaviors that expose your inner soul.

And now to more practical matters:  How do you become a seer and an oracle?  you only have to  pray constantly for wisdom and knowledge and you will also become a seer and an oracle.  To obtain, get to know and follow the rule of love?  That is a totally different story.  That is the hardest path to follow and the one which puts on your shoulder the largest and heaviest of crosses.

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

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We Are Being Played! Trumped!

Thursday, April 27th, 2017

The “roll out” of Donald J. Trump’s tax program was amazing.  It is the (1%) one percenters dream.  If it goes through it create a country without responsibility to anyone except its top ten percent – the bottom nine percent of this top ten percent will be the recipients of this country’s “welfare”.  It is the way to acquire unlimited wealth and pass it on to your children.

Every country has suffered from having no ‘death tax’ because the wealth of their top group grows to extremes and the poverty of its bottom group becomes beyond desperate.

My dream has been to be able to pass on what I have worked so hard for all of my life to my children and grandchildren.  It isn’t a huge estate, but enough for me to rest in peace knowing they would have some backup as life delivers one body blow after another.  But, every time I think those thoughts I think of all of those others – children and grandchildren of people who have not been able to accumulate an estate of any kind and generally leave their children in debt.

It is a conflict for most of us, but the ‘death tax’ usually wins, if we have a shred of caring for those who can’t care for themselves and if we care about trying to lift up those who were born so downtrodden they won’t make it otherwise.

However, that is not the case with many who have accumulated a substantial estate.  It seems those who have created the largest estates are the greediest and want to see everything move down the generations of  their own families.  They generally wind up passing negative moral judgments on those who have not been able to create the same.  They become those who are ‘better than’ on so many levels and those in front of  whom the rest of us become subservient because we want a little of their wealth to rub off into our families.

Trump’s reduction in the tax rate – elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax and all of his other proposals will bankrupt the United States Treasury and the deficit will zoom.  He knows that – he is not new to this game – his own estate has shown him the ins and outs of taxes and those he chose to work with him and on this tax problem, among others, are very much in tune with Trump’s way of life and way of thinking.  The poor, the sick, those who have many problems which have kept them from amassing large amounts of money are parasitic interlopers into their “hard work” and “success.”

The longer I live the clearer it becomes that those who have succeeded awesomely have done so at the expense of the poor, the sick, the indigent, the minority, the women in this society.  They have used the life, the work, the dreams of others to make it in big ways.  They have stripped those others of everything and have no conscience about their deeds.

Right before this tax cut was rolled out, the ‘Trumpster’ started playing us all.  As many buttons as he could push to distract from this tax business he pushed.  Talking heads in the media took the bait; civil rights activists took the bait; those working for economic justice took the bait and Trump cleared a wide path for his people to walk down the road, make their announcement of things to come and the response was muted because we were all looking at where Trump’s finger was pointing instead of at the moon.

We are being played.  We have been played since Trump started his run for office.  The very large choice Trump made in how he would make his money was via casinos, after all.  (It always amazes me how “evangelicals’ ran so hard after and for a hard core gambler).

His research is to find the ‘hot buttons’ in this society and choose which ones to push before he does something he wants to slip through as unnoticed as possible and he is very good at that.  It is called manipulation and Trump is the Great Manipulator.  He has done a magnificent job.  He got votes from the middle class because he convinced them that his racism, sexism, general all around bigotry, anti-immigrant stance was just what they needed to recover whatever they lost.  The fact that under Trump they would lose even more was totally hidden and many still haven’t seen the game.  The money support he has received has been awesome and none of that middle class has asked -‘where did we get that kind of money to support you – we sent small dollars because it was all we had – so now what are you going to do for those who tossed so many dollars into your ‘honey pots’ because what they want is anathema to us.’

And – by the way – is Amazon.com still a large Trump supporter?  The story of their bottom to middle employees needs to be told truthfully to understand why amazon.com’s support of Trump follows its path!

Let the games continue!  Let those who have Trump Dust in their eyes get clear and see so they can begin to win some of these games.  No one is going to do it for you!  And to the rest of us – Reagan was the opening parenthesis; Trump is the closing – what does that mean!!  What preceded Reagan and what was between the opening and closing parentheses?  It is the pattern of our world, repeated over and over and over again.

This country has had too many times of the majority fighting for equality and justice and those few at the top planning and bringing about the defeat of that equality and justice which peeps through each spring before it gets mowed down, covered with all those chemicals, comes back looking bedraggled, tired and straggly while that top group, regroups and finds a new-different-and better way to rip off the rest of us.  Certainly the technology group has found ways to become extraordinarily wealthier than any that preceded them.  Their progeny lives to fight another day, wealthy beyond imaginings and walking in their ancestors paths – until this next group comes along to knock them off.  They grow smaller in numbers but greater in strength and their look is characterized as how the rest of the culture should look.  There are very few women in that group, but have you noticed their shoes?  The highest heels – the thickest platforms – the latest style – and never under four figures.  That is how you know them from the wives of the tech people.

And the progeny of those fighters for love, peace, equality, justice and all that’s related start once again thinking that this time they will succeed where their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents failed and this world will be beautiful and good for all of its inhabitants because of their work – they will get it right.  The extremes of that group have been called a cults.  The extreme of the other group have been called the real heroes of the world and it is their history that goes down the generations.  The others are characterized like John the Baptist and pictured as we think he looked in his day. Their adaptation of ‘their historical culture’ always makes up the look of what we label the ‘counter culture.’

Think on these things so you can begin to take over your life.  It is difficult.  It is stressful.  You don’t always win.  But, you become stronger as you fight each battle whether you win or lose and at some point if you continue standing on your own two feet you begin to win more than you lose.  But the real reward is the inner peace that comes and the love that glows from your very body.

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc. It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

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A Promoter of Conspiracy Theories – President?

Tuesday, December 6th, 2016

America – really?  You elected a man who was the spokesperson and promoter of conspiracy theories as your president? Really?  Come on – that can’t be real.  Are you really that racist, America?

The last president spent eight years in office – an African American.  He was elected – and re-elected.  He was respected around the world.  He wasn’t perfect, but he did a pretty good job.  He had no scandals during his time in office.  He had no affairs.  He spent his time with his family.  He raised two daughters and now into their teen years – some say, the most difficult time for parents.  And still, after seeing all of that you elected who?  A man who was the spokesperson in Chief for the Birther Movement?  Who was on television and in countless videos speaking far and wide about Barack Obama not being an American.  Who called your duly elected president a liar.  A man who claimed that your American president was living a lie to his fellow Americans by claiming to be an American when he was actually born in Africa.

America, you laughed at this Donald Trump, the Conspiracy theorist in Chief – and then you elected him your next president?  You made him the butt of many jokes and the late night comics had a field day.

America, is your need to identify as White that strong.  You are, after all, the ones who set up “White” as a race.  So I guess we should not be that surprised when you feel the need to protect this “White American” race.  You didn’t realize when you set up this White race identity that it would not only be about slavery and identifying the other as “Colored”, “Black” and now “African American”, but would become your ingrained identity and keep you forever needing to be seen as “better than”.  You went so far as  setting up White Privilege to go along with that White American identity.  Jealous of the English Colonialism with which they tried to rule the world?

Problem with that is colors always seemed to me to be more interesting, have more depth, be about something.  “White” seemed so lacking in ….. something.  And now I see what “White” lacks –  Character? Ethics? Truth? And has a little “Evil” ingrained.   We thought, at some point, that you would just become “American”.

Who is this man?  Who is this conspiracy theorist who so portrayed your president for eight years – and longer – as an African who was fooling the American public by claiming to be an American when in fact he was not.  And you – citizens of the United States – elected this man, this conspiracy theorist, your president.  Donald Trump – president elect of the United States. Chief Conspiracy Theorist.

Your founding fathers must be proud because they slipped into the Constitution this Electoral College, which they hoped would insure that White Males (hopefully) Northern Europeans would always be president of these United States of America.  You kept that Electoral College in your Constitution for hundreds of years as a bulwark against any serious kind of desegregation.  Wow! What foresight you all had.  But what a price you have paid.  Isn’t that what stopped Al Gore?  But then maybe you were right to do that because wasn’t that – no, couldn’t have been, must have been someone else – a look alike.  His character wouldn’t let him.  But then he claimed to have invented the internet, which dropped his character a rung or two, so maybe that was him running into that Tower.

And so the founders have reached into the 21st century with that desire to maintain slavery and have caused you Americans to elect a man who is:

  1. A conspiracy theorist.  His biggest conspiracy and most successful one was spreading the lie that Barack Obama was born in Africa and he and his family were lying about who he really is.  Will he have the support of and appoint other Conspiracy Theorists to his cabinet and other places in his government so his way of being “in charge” will continue on?
  2. A Casino Operator – a man who built and operated several casino’s.  Even one in Las Vegas.  Now, I was always told that Casino Operators could only exist if they were a part of the mafia or could only exist with the blessing and support of the mafia.  Las Vegas – New Jersey – big mafia strongholds in the United States (so I have been told). So what does that make your new president and who will really be in control of your government.  And you looked down on Cuba when it was overrun with mafioso from the United States.  Now that Cuba has cleaned itself up, will the United States of America be the place where that happens?
  3. The owner of a Construction Company – which built hotels, apartment houses, etc. AND would not allow Blacks to rent or live in any of his buildings.  I have seen the newspaper clippings and the cases against Mr. Donald Trump.  Not only against him, but he comes by this legitimately because he inherited this racism from his father, who also built buildings in which he did not allow Blacks to live.  Isn’t that a violation of your laws America?  And yet you elected this man, who with his family, violated your laws blatantly and is still violating your laws and you now call him your president-elect?
  4. A man, who reportedly only values a woman for her body – isn’t that sexism?  Doesn’t that also violate your laws, America.  And still you elected him your president?
  5. A man, who it rumored, has violated all of the 10 Commandments.  Maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but he has violated enough of them that those loud outspoken Evangelicals praising who we thought was God were really only singing their praises to god.  So we really can’t dump on them since they are  worshipping their idols and we do believe in freedom of religion.  We were only fooled a little while by the names they called him.  We were fighting them because we knew our God wasn’t HIM.  We knew our Jesus was born male, not to glorify maleness, but to glorify God.  It was offending God for us to be taking on such a fight to try to keep their god primary in front of everyone.  This election has cleared our eyes. Idol worship is not for us and never has been.   We wouldn’t be surprised if one day soon they don’t start calling their god, Donald Trump.  They have already started to talk about their god sending Donald Trump to them.  And how this is all their gods plan.  But they don’t seem to understand retribution – payment for past sins – God’s wrath – evil.  They seem to think that is a good thing sent by their god for their betterment.  Well, actually, it probably is being sent by their god in the hopes it will produce their betterment, but the way their leaders are running into the Tower offering their congratulations, their services, their excitement about the “Don’s” coming success it is seriously doubtful that God’s message is getting through.

HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN!

Abraham Lincoln didn’t bring you down! – he raised you up.

Martin Luther King, Jr. didn’t bring you down! – he raised you even higher.

but Donald Trump is bringing you wayyyyyyyy down.

And look at how your BIG MEN are falling all over themselves running in to kiss the ring. Their character – their ethics – their very souls are on display for all to see.

Wasn’t that Mitt Romney we saw running into Trump Tower and having dinner with the Almighty One?

And we though Mitt Romney was one of the good guys.  When he saw what was happening with the election in his beloved country, he stood up and was counted as someone who said he was not going along with this travesty.  He didn’t say “evil” but he might as well have because what he did say came down to the same thing. But what was he really doing?  Did he read the tea leaves and saw that Hillary Clinton was going to win so he was not downing Donald Trump and taking an ethical stand, but positioning himself to be in line for some kind of substantial position in Hillary’s government?

Oh, Oh, Nooooooooo! Not him too!  Oh my goodness – there goes Al Gore – into the Tower!  Well, we always had our suspicions about him.  He tried, but he just couldn’t pull off being such a good guy.  And now, we see him totally uncovered.

Oh, help me to my seat and cover my eyes and ear, I don’t know how much more of this I can stand.

Oh – and when your new president goes traveling around the world with his ‘wife” – which one?  The one who allowed all those pictures to be taken of herself in the various kinds of poses that a prostitute takes to advertise her wares.  Now, be careful here, I am not calling her a prostitute, but I said clearly, the kind of pictures a prostitute takes – naked on a bear rug with high heels up in the air and handcuffed to the bed and etc.  Some are calling her a soft porn model.  We will just look at the pictures circling the world and shake our heads.  Trump better get the Muslims and soon because when those pictures of his wife start circulating in religious Muslim circles – oh my!

And how does your president-elect handle his anti-semitism.  Well, his daughter has put him in a trap because she went off and married an Orthodox Jew.  Well, not only did she do that, but she became one herself.  Now you know in Judaism, the children take on the identity of the mother, so if she hadn’t converted, her children would not be in danger of being Jews.  But she went off and did the thing so now her husband and her children are Jews. So how did your President-elect handle that?  Is that his anger at this marriage, all of you Americans, that turned him so viciously against Muslims?  So badly so that he wants to eliminate all of them!  Is this going to be another purge by the Norther Europeans.  The last time they tried to get rid of the Jews.  This time there is a Jew sitting in the halls of power so they are going to try to get rid of all the Muslims.  Well, just as well.  Eventually, somehow, they will rid the world of all those they various and sundry people they consider “minorities”.

Oh, America, my heart aches for you.  Don’t you know you have to pay for your sins?  Haven’t you seen enough of God’s retribution to know that your day is coming?  Maybe this is it!  Maybe this is the beginning of your having to pay for the slavery you brought on Africans.  Or maybe this is the beginning of your retribution for what you have done to those who lived in the land before the Northern Europeans arrived.  What are they called today?  Indians?  No, that is politically incorrect – Native Americans.  What a name.  Call them Native Americans and then invade and destroy the little bits and pieces of land they have left and make sure it will soon be covered with the results of the many oil spills that will happen,as those Northern Europeans make loads of money in the companies that are going to dig up their privately owned land drilling for what?  Covering up what?  Taking back what?  Is this a new form of genocide – against those you have given the honorific title of Native American and made them think that this title was their idea?

Oh, America, I pray for you every day.  There are so many good people in your country.  What is going to happen to them.  They seem to be allowing these few others to take over and destroy every dream they have ever had.  Or maybe that is the problem – have they been so treated they don’t have anymore dreams?

My goodness, some of those good people are Northern Europeans.  Then who are these who have so wrecked the land and continue to wreck the land?  Who are those who let them?  I understand Donald Trump owns stock in the company about to destroy the land of the native Americans to cause oil to pollute the water so they will have nothing to drink.  And what about the rest of us – we won’t either.

You have allowed whoever these people are to destroy your country.  To invade and change the dreams of your people.  You started out in such a beautiful way.  We really hoped you would succeed.  But you have now been derailed and who knows if your country will ever be the same again.

Germany certainly didn’t expect to descend into a Nazi state.  And today, it seems as though it is only the Germans who really recognize the danger you are in America.  Have they learned from their mistakes?

So what now?  As your country began to become diverse – that beautiful diverse place where all were supposed to be welcome – what is the quote “bring me your tired,….”  That poem written by Emma Lazarus and cut into the stone with that gift from France to be a beacon to Exiles from all over the world

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Oh, No!  Is the writer of this poem – Emma – a woman? Is that why they turned against immigrants?  Will that open the door to taking her poem off the Statue of Liberty?  And a better, more American under Donald Trump type poem in its place?

Well, that is certainly no longer America.  Will it ever be again?  With Donald Trump and his friends – not likely. The United States of America used to travel the world telling others how they should change to be more like America.  Walk hand in hand into the sunset with the Casino Operator and his Soft Porn Model wife – naahh, that doesn’t sound quite right.

And here you are America – flirting with becoming another Russia; another fascistic state with its super wealthy governing people and underlings in line for bread – you can ignore this if you dare, but stay on this road and that day is coming and sooner than you think.

I used to think America was the greatest nation on earth.  Today, I realize you are the most foolish.

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The TRUMP TICKET Exposed!

Wednesday, October 5th, 2016

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2016

The Vice Presidential debates for the 2016 campaign for the Presidency of the United States happened last night.

They laid bare the American soul.

The candidate for president – Donald Trump – has shown himself to be unstable, irresponsible, saying one thing today and another tomorrow and basically someone who looks as though he is on a cocaine high.  He has also shown himself to be a liar.  One who lies to manipulate and win.

The candidate for vice president – Mike Pence – has shown himself to be the sociopath on the ticket.  A cool, calm, collected, elegant liar who is totally unaffected by his lies because a sociopath is who he is at his core.  He can lie and justify the lies of those around him without batting an eye – without his eyelids twitching – without any other physical sign showing that his body can’t stand the lying.  So you know that Mike Pence, the sociopath is an accurate comment.

This election has ‘outed’ all of the problem areas in the American populace; American history; American economics, etc.

Up until now, all of these things were pretty much hidden, with code words used, when it was necessary to talk about some of our problems without really being upfront and truthful.  And so, the problems have continued and grown worse.  We, however, have gotten better at our denials and embroidery and all the others ways we have developed to make a lie look like the truth and to make the denial of a citizens rights look as though that person is hyper-sensitive, complaining unnecessarily, and it is all their fault.  That is certainly some of what we have used to get into and continue slavery for a few hundred years; to maintain Jim Crow for a hundred or more years after that; and to force some of the citizens of the United States to use all of their resources, missed opportunities; and more to fight the racism which is constantly tearing them, their families, their friends apart.  That is how sociopath as a disease runs all through this American society.  That is certainly why we now have a Donald Trump candidacy with a Mike Pence Vice Presidial candidate and almost half the country backing their candidacy.  This election is making a major statement about the American character and it is not pretty.

To listen to the media comment on the debate,  one is struck that as Americans we all have different degrees of sociopath.

Mike Pence responded to questions about what Donald Trump has said in the past by denying everything negative.  He could do that because the media agreed to not fact check this debate.  That was a plus for and promotion of the Donald Trump candidacy.  Excuse it however you want to, that is a fact.  It was clear when the announcement was made that this debate would not be fact checked the media was opening the door for lies, distortions, and more.  And the candidate did not disappoint.

Mostly the talk has been about the cool, composed style of Mike Pence and how Tim Paine lost so many points because he was too aggressive, emotional and more. Tim Paine lost points with the media and many of its followers because he responded to a pack of lies the way most people respond to such.  Certainly not with denial and more lies on top of the lies with which one is confronted.

I am not sure I could have kept my cool if I were debating someone who was lying consistently and nothing was stopping him.  To respond in the cool composed manner the media expected of Tim Kaine would have said Kaine was bordering on the sociopath.  His upset, emotional and sometimes overly aggressive way of responding is normally how someone responds to being faced with a barrage of lies at an important moment with millions of people listening.  That must be an incredibly frustrating time.  To act any other way would be to project an emotional lie.

And why do we have folks complimenting Mike Pence for his “style” and demeanor and to give him excuses for the lies he told such as – he must not listen to the coverage given his running mate; or, he probably has immune himself to Trump’s lies and can deny all that he denied because he hasn’t heard Trump say these things – and on and on and on.

But Mike Pence prepared for this debate and one way of preparing is to go over the issues and your tickets response to the issues.  Given that, his responses to say Trump didn’t say that or to attempt to turn something Trump did say into something else in that cool way he had, these are the actions of a long terms strong sociopath.

If you didn’t recognize that – check yourself.

If you did, then you also recognized that the society in which we live is so wrapped up in its own form of sociopath that it didn’t see anything wrong with Mike Pence’s performance.

To deny the racism in this society is to lie about what you know and what your ancestors knew was true.

To deny the sexism in this society is to lie about what you know and what your ancestors knew was true.

To allow homelessness with human beings sleeping on the streets; having no jobs; no care of any kind; and being treated by many in the most rejecting, demeaning and ugly way and to deny that you know this about yourself and others and that you know this is what your society is about is a form of sociopath.

To work in a corporation and to see how it is destroying human life – the environment – plus other kinds of ugly and evil things and not address this while denying the existence of what you see on a day to day basis is a form of sociopath.

I could go through the entire list, but you get the message.

So, when a Mike Pence comes on television and lies the way he lied on Tuesday evening and to have the media saying he “won” the debate for various reasons says we have a long ways to go to reach some kind of caring humanity.  We are stuck in a lying, self-justifying, sinful place which we then justify, substitute a great style to accept the lying – its ok to lie if you do it elegantly and in an acceptable way, and more.

All corners of this society are being exposed by Donald Trump’s campaign and Tuesday evening showed us the worst.

I want to be around people who are distressed, disturbed, distraught when they are faced with lies and liars – the way Tim Paine was when he was faced with Mike Pence and his lies and denials.

I want to be around people working to make this world a better place for all of us.  Not perfect people because we only seem to reach perfection.  In actual fact we are all flawed, but working on those flaws.  To be around those with the perfect persona projected by Mike Pence on Tuesday hardens us back to the actors and others who have presented perfect images to us during their political campaigns and we bought them hook, line and sinker.  But even in the buying we knew it was a lie, we just engaged in denial to accept and promote the liars and elect them to the important posts in the land.

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TO CELEBRATE JULY 4th AND TO REMEMBER

Monday, July 4th, 2016

The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro

(Ed. Note:  25 to 35 Million Africans were robbed of their freedom; taken from their country and put into slavery for 400 plus years – first by the Arabs and then by Europeans and Americans – Southern Americans, but the people in America who most benefitted from the slave trade were New Englanders.)

by Frederick Douglass

A speech given at Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852

Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens:

He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country school houses, avails me nothing on the present occasion.

The papers and placards say that I am to deliver a Fourth of July Oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for me. It is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall seems to free me from embarrassment.

The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable-and the difficulties to he overcome in getting from the latter to the former are by no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence I will proceed to lay them before you.

This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the Fourth of July. It is the birth day of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, as what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. l am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young.-Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.

Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. The simple story of it is, that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. The style and title of your “sovereign people” (in which you now glory) was not then born. You were under the British Crown. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper.

But your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. It would certainly prove nothing as to what part I might have taken had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when, to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men’s souls. They who did so were accounted in their day plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. But, to proceed.

Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated, by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet they persevered. They were not the men to look back.

As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest and best of British statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of.

The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present rulers.

Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.

Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably, ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any great change (no matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the stars. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor.

These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers; and the appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea that is meant by a more modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find in our papers, applied to some of our old politicians.

Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it.

On the 2nd of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national sanction. They did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day, whose transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it.

“Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved.”
Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, there fore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history-the very ringbolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.

Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ringbolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day-cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.

The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an interesting event. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness. The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime. The population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant number of three millions. The country was poor in the munitions of war. The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness unsubdued. There were then no means of concert and combination, such as exist now. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline. From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of many days. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty and independence and triumphed.

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too-great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.

They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests.

They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was “settIed” that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were “final”; not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.

How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! How unlike the politicians of an hour! Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defence. Mark them! Fully appreciating the hardships to be encountered, firmly believing in the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume, wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom, lay deep, the corner-stone of the national super-structure, which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you.

Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. Our eyes are met with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm. Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. The din of business, too, is hushed. Even mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. The ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells. Prayers are made, hymns are sung, and sermons are preached in honor of this day; while the quick martial tramp of a great and multitudinous nation, echoed back by all the hills, valleys and mountains of a vast continent, bespeak the occasion one of thrilling and universal interest-nation’s jubilee.

Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary. Many of you understand them better than I do. You could instruct me in regard to them. That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. The causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown have never lacked for a tongue. They have all been taught in your common schools, narrated at your firesides, un folded from your pulpits, and thundered from your legislative halls, and are as familiar to you as household words. They form the staple of your national po etry and eloquence.

I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor. This is esteemed by some as a national trait-perhaps a national weakness. It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans and can be had cheap! will be found by Americans. I shall not be charged with slandering Americans if I say I think the American side of any question may be safely left in American hands.

I leave, therefore, the great deeds of your fathers to other gentlemen whose claim to have been regularly descended will be less likely to be disputed than mine!

My business, if I have any here to-day, is with the present. The accepted time with God and His cause is the ever-living now.
Trust no future, however pleasant,
Let the dead past bury its dead;
Act, act in the living present,
Heart within, and God overhead.
We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do your work. You have no right to enjoy a child’s share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own. This truth is not a doubtful one. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for the children of Jacob to boast, we have “Abraham to our father,” when they had long lost Abraham’s faith and spirit. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abraham’s great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchers of the righteous? Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shout-“We have Washington to our father.”-Alas! that it should be so; yet it is.
The evil, that men do, lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones.
Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap as an hart.”

But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.-The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fa thers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”

Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse”; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, “It is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less; would you persuade more, and rebuke less; your cause would be much more likely to succeed.” But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They ac knowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may con sent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding.-There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Take the American slave-trade, which we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year by dealers in this horrid traffic. In several states this trade is a chief source of wealth. It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) “the internal slave-trade.” It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. That trade has long since been denounced by this government as piracy. It has been denounced with burning words from the high places of the nation as an execrable traffic. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. Everywhere, in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave-trade as a most inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the Jaws of God and of man. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our doctors of divinity. In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and establish them selves on the western coast of Africa! It is, however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans upon all those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass with out condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable.

Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and American religion. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a man-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will see one of these human flesh jobbers, armed with pistol, whip, and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They are food for the cotton-field and the deadly sugar-mill. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-curdling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! There, see the old man with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the centre of your soul The crack you heard was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow this drove to New Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shock ing gaze of American slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Tell me, citizens, where, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.

I was born amid such sights and scenes. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot Street, Fell’s Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming “hand-bills,” headed cash for Negroes. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners; ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.

The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient number has been collected here, a ship is chartered for the purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Orleans. From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night; for since the antislavery agitation, a certain caution is observed.

In the deep, still darkness of midnight, I have been often aroused by the dead, heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense; and I was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the rattle of the chains and the heart-rending cries. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror.

Fellow-citizens, this murderous traffic is, to-day, in active operation in this boasted republic. In the solitude of my spirit I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity on the way to the slave-markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. My soul sickens at the sight.
Is this the land your Fathers loved,
The freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the earth whereon they moved?
Are these the graves they slumber in?
But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason and Dixon’s line has been obliterated; New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women and children, as slaves, remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States. The power is co-extensive with the star-spangled banner, and American Christianity. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. Where these are, man is not sacred. He is a bird for the sportsman’s gun. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground for men. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Your law-makers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Your President, your Secretary of State, your lords, nobles, and ecclesiastics enforce, as a duty you owe to your free and glorious country, and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. Not fewer than forty Americans have, within the past two years, been hunted down and, without a moment’s warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery and excruciating torture. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. The right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included! For black men there is neither law nor justice, humanity nor religion. The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery! His own testimony is nothing. He can bring no witnesses for himself. The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear but one side; and that side is the side of the oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let it be thundered around the world that in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America the seats of justice are filled with judges who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding the case of a man’s liberty, to hear only his accusers!

In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenceless, and in diabolical intent this Fugitive Slave Law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. I doubt if there be another nation on the globe having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book. If any man in this assembly thinks differently from me in this matter, and feels able to disprove my statements, I will gladly confront him at any suitable time and place he may select.

I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were nor stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it.

At the very moment that they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and for the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance and makes it utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness. Did this law concern the “mint, anise, and cummin”-abridge the right to sing psalms, to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion, it would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. A general shout would go up from the church demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal!-And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to so licit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. Further, if this demand were not complied with, another Scotland would be added to the history of religious liberty, and the stern old covenanters would be thrown into the shade. A John Knox would be seen at every church door and heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox to the beautiful, but treacherous, Queen Mary of Scotland. The fact that the church of our country (with fractional exceptions) does not esteem “the Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war against religious liberty, im plies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love, and good will towards man. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. The Bible addresses all such persons as “scribes, pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe ofÝ mint, anise, and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.”

But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines, who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity.

For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done! These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action nor bowels of compassion. They strip the love of God of its beauty and leave the throne of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. It is not that “pure and undefiled religion” which is from above, and which is “first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and with out hypocrisy.” But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land and nation-a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, “Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons, and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. They are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea’ when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow.”

The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in its connection with its ability to abolish slavery.

The sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of commission. Albert Barnes but uttered what the common sense of every man at all observant of the actual state of the case will receive as truth, when he declared that “There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.”

Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday School, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery, and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds, and that they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive.

In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry; but how, we ask, could such a thing be done? We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave, by the church and ministry of the country, in battle arrayed against us; and we are compelled to fight or flee. From what quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared-men honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. The Lords of Buffalo, the Springs of New York, the Lathrops of Auburn, the Coxes and Spencers of Brooklyn, the Gannets and Sharps of Boston, the Deweys of Washington, and other great religious lights of the land have, in utter denial of the authority of Him by whom they professed to be called to the ministry, deliberately taught us, against the example of the Hebrews, and against the remonstrance of the Apostles, that we ought to obey man’s law before the law of God.2

My spirit wearies of such blasphemy; and how such men can be supported, as the “standing types and representatives of Jesus Christ,” is a mystery which I leave others to penetrate. In speaking of the American church, however, let it be distinctly understood that I mean the great mass of the religious organizations of our land. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher, of Brooklyn; Samuel J. May, of Syracuse; and my esteemed friend (Rev. R. R. Raymond) on the platform, are shining examples; and let me say further, that, upon these men lies the duty to inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal, and to cheer us on in the great mission of the slave’s redemption from his chains.

One is struck with the difference between the attitude of the American church towards the anti-slavery movement, and that occupied by the churches in Eng land towards a similar movement in that country. There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and re stored him to his liberty. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. It was demanded in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, the Burchells, and the Knibbs were alike famous for their piety and for their philanthropy. The anti-slavery movement there was not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting that movement: and the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement, when the church of this country shall assume a favorable instead of a hostile position towards that movement.

Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties) is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and body-guards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from oppression in your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot, and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education; yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation-a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen, and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against the oppressor; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a three-penny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. You profess to believe “that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth,” and hath commanded all men, everywhere, to love one another; yet you notoriously hate (and glory in your hatred) all men whose skins are not colored like your own. You declare before the world, and are understood by the world to declare that you “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain in alienable rights; and that among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and yet, you hold securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, “is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose,” a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country.

Fellow-citizens, I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad: it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing and a bye-word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. it fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement; the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet you cling to it as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever!

But it is answered in reply to all this, that precisely what I have now denounced is, in fact, guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States; that, the right to hold, and to hunt slaves is a part of that Constitution framed by the illustrious Fathers of this Republic.

Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped
To palter with us in a double sense:
And keep the word of promise to the ear,
But break it to the heart.
And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest impostors that ever practised on mankind. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape; but I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length; nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esq. by William Goodell, by Samuel E. Sewall, Esq., and last, though not least, by Gerrit Smith, Esq. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour.

Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but interpreted, as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gate way? or is it in the temple? it is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slaveholding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can any where be found in it. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a tract of land, in which no mention of land was made? Now, there are certain rules of interpretation for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well established. They are plain, commonsense rules, such as you and I, and all of us, can understand and apply, without having passed years in the study of law. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality, or unconstitutionality of slavery, is not a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive, and no American heart too devoted. He further says, the Constitution, in its words, is plain and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our fellow-citizens. Senator Berrien tells us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. The testimony of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be named, who are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers, so regard the constitution. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument.

Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand, it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

I have detained my audience entirely too long already. At some future period I will gladly avail myself of an opportunity to give this subject a full and fair discussion.

Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery.

“The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from “the Declaration of Independence,” the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated.-Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other.

The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God.” In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:

God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o’er!
When from their galling chains set free,
Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee,

And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom’s reign.
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.

God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each return for evil, good,
Not blow for blow;

That day will come all feuds to end,
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.

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The ‘Sharing’ Community????

Friday, April 29th, 2016

The first thing we note in that name – which has become attached to several kinds of businesses – is the fact that it is an extreme misnomer.  There is nothing “sharing” about that group of businesses.  Unless you call the lower to middle classes sharing their small assets and ideas in ways to make the upper entrepreneurial class extremely wealthy, a “Sharing Community.”

The business titans of the next generation will all come from this extremely wealthy group.  They take into their rather exclusive club those they have identified as ‘like them’.  And we all know our own.

A more accurate name would be the Greedy/ Grasping/ Exclusive and Excluding/ Racist and Sexist Community!

Wow! That sounds angry!  – It is most definitely not a happy frame of mind.

Let’s take a look.  Is it angry or is it accurate.

The ‘Sharing’ Community is the group of entrepreneurs who have taken a funnel; poured into the top all the assets they could not touch and do not own; taken the lions share of those assets – without buying them or putting upfront any kind of money in exchange for those assets; and have come out with multi-billions of dollars while the people who own the assets being used are given a dream that turns into a nightmare as they look at the fact that only a very few realize that dream.  Those that realize the dream are the few used to disprove the rule.

The ‘Sharing Community’ is bringing in racism and classism like no other corporate structure has been able to create, maintain or enforce.  They do it by painting pictures of this wonderful society – the beloved society – which will bring us all together in a very loving and sharing way.

Most of the folks, who have had this imitation stardust thrown into their eyes and who cannot see what is in front of them, but subscribe to the mythology, are the ones who will be hurt the most.

Take a look at the companies who have been most exposed by the media.  The others won’t be far behind.  Not totally exposed, however, because the media realize that while they must tell – at least part of the truth – their owners have to survive and they do that surviving through the advertising dollars of those new “Sharing Community” groups.  It would be so easy if we all took on the responsibility of thinking – carefully thinking of what is presented to us so beautifully gift wrapped.

Take Amazon.  There have been articles written, exposing the warehouse slavery which happens at Amazon – exposing how they treat their employees – not the ones at the top who are now multi-billionaires; nor the ones in the middle who are multi-millionaires; but the ones at the bottom making all of that possible for those top executives and investors.

Amazon has been talked and written about describing its racism and sexism, but we were too busy dreaming to listen.  They have just recently shown clearly, not only their extreme racism but the very arrogant way they assume it is their right to act it out and expect the larger society to not notice and/or to approve.  They don’t notice their own racism because it is totally ingrained in their structure and their corporate culture.

In Boston, they announced one day delivery to all except those who live in Roxbury.  How is that racist?  Roxbury is where most of the African Americans and other minorities live.

They were preceded almost a generation ago by the first company giving you access to the internet with your own personal account.  If you were African American and/or other minorities deemed less than by this society you could not get such an internet account.  It was set up so that you had to have a credit card to have an internet account and your credit card had to be rated above a certain level.  We worked with many minorities who were denied access to the internet.  Not until everything was running smoothly and the majority society was very skilled at the internet; saw its possibilities; started building companies to take advantage of the internet were those barriers relaxed – and other internet companies started to join in the picture.  And at that point groups took on the job of trying to bring the ‘disadvantaged’ into the fold.  Not as equals, but as those less than who didn’t know enough to join this revolution.  Now, the rest of us would have to do our ‘nobles oblige’ and work to bring them up to speed, because they couldn’t do it themselves.  Not totally up to speed, but just enough to maintain our superiority and show what looks like our compassion.

The story given out was that you had to have this kind of credit card because your monthly fee – which at the time was around $12/month – had to be taken out of your credit card each month.  They had to know the money would be there when they automatically withdrew their fee – and other minor embroideries to attempt to justify this racist exclusion.  One of the exclusions was – if you were divorced – and female – you had to be one year out of your divorce before you could get an internet account. How quickly we forget.

As we worked with people trying to get an internet account – they offered to pay their fees one year in advance to avoid the ‘guideline’ set up which excluded them – they had no credit card, couldn’t get a credit card, and the few that had credit cards did not have a high enough rating in their cards to qualify – our ‘forgetfulness’ also extends to the role of the credit cards in the continuing oppression structured into this society.  That offer of cash or check in advance for one years fees was immediately declined by the company.  So much for what the internet provider considered a necessary policy.

If you look closely at the policies and practices of Amazon you will find them riddled with racism and sexism.  We are too far away from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s to think and parallel and see how grossly minorities are treated – and – we are too busy scrambling for something that we feel is important, to stop and take a serious look at what these companies are doing and how they are structuring into our present a more rigid racism and sexism for our children’s generation than that which we have had to face and fight.

Their control will be complete by the time what they are doing is recognized and addressed.  Didn’t Amazon feel free enough to eliminate Roxbury from their one day delivery without expecting any blow back from such a policy and without even realizing the racism of the policy?  Or did they put the policy in place knowing it would negatively  affect African Americans and other minorities in the neighborhood and that was the reason for the policy in the first place, but it went into place anyway because their goal is to benefit their “own” and to eliminate anything they feel might be a ‘danger’ to the development of their business? And, is that ‘danger’ minorities and women?

A corporate structure reflects the times in which it was created and the people who did the creating of the structure.  The racism and sexism of the original founders would be intricately incorporated into the structure they put into place.  Their fears, their identity, their needs would be very much woven into the structure of what they found.  I meant “found” because most of the ideas about which we are discussing were stolen from others without any need to do otherwise.  That spirit would be all through their creation.  They would take someone else’s idea and add their own racism, sexism, insecurities into what they created and continue to create.

And then there is Airbnb!  Found to have racist policies by Harvard Business School Harvard Gazette Article they are still free to exercise them. HBS Article . By the time the rest of us catch up and understand what they have structured, they will have taken us back to the days when African Americans had their own b and b listing of places they could stay because they were closed out completely from the accommodations others could use.  This time, the close-out will be complete because it will be hidden and not many will take on the deconstruction necessary to lay that bare.

Once upon a time during the Civil Rights Movement, colleges and universities used a discrete kind of racism and sexism.  A way to discriminate without saying we have rejected your application because you are too dark; too non-American; too, etc.

One huge way they put in place to enforce that discrimination was to require a picture with your application.

Those minorities who did not have the tell-tale entries in their application – their name; their address; the schools they went to before applying; etc. would be caught in the net of the picture requirement and the schools could then – and they did – reject the applications based on the recognized basis of racism and sexism rather than allowing the application to go ahead and be considered on its merits.  Some colleges and universities didn’t totally reject all minorities, but they had a quota.  Once that quota was reached, all others were rejected and the picture requirement made that possible.

Airbnb started without a picture requirement unless you had an African American sounding name or your application to use their services was picked up with something being not quite right.  What was that?  A possible minority, you say?

To correct that, they have apparently started to require a picture from almost everyone.  Does that sound familiar?  A policy which does the same thing and allows the same kind of discrimination practiced by colleges and universities a generation ago.

Take a look at other companies which are a part of this ‘sharing community’.  Basically, you are allowed to use assets you struggled to acquire for your family, etc. to ‘share’ with others.  You use them sometimes and you rent them out to others at other times.  What happens through this process?  You generally rent them out at a lower rate than an established business offering the same services.  The fact that the people in these other businesses have struggled for more than one generation to get their reimbursement up to a fairly decent amount and are still struggling for things like health insurance, etc. means nothing to those renting out their similar assets for less.  They are thinking of how rich they are going to become and maybe even be able to buy more than one of the same kind of asset or something similar to expand the services offered and they and their friends are going to walk into the very rich sunset together.

Instead, they find they are increasingly pushed against the wall and deprived of much because the reason the other services cost more begins to push into their lives.  The assets experiences wear and tear; they have expenses which were not included in their initial calculation of how much they were going to profit; they gradually start down that slippery slope and lose even that with which they started.  What is also enmeshed into this corporate revolution is the all out hunt for and stealing of the ideas and businesses of others, who do not have access to the investors in this Sharing Community.  I have met more people whose corporations are viable and struggling who have been swamped and destroyed by the greedy grabbing and stealing of their ideas and their decades of work developing a business which is then stolen and put in place as though it came full blown out of the minds and experiences of those claiming it as a part of the “Sharing Community.”  That kind of theft is no less criminal than the kind against which this society has definite criminal laws.

Who is profiting from the use of their assets – the investors in the overarching business which has set itself up to allow this asset use.  They are multi-billionaires in record time – like a few years, if that long.  Where did all of that money come from?  The backs and lives of those who see what is being offered as some pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and the marketing and advertising of the overarching businesses who are very good at painting that picture.

It is time to take a good look at what this society is becoming and how the masses are moving into an indentured servant class while their lives are being taken to make a greedy group wealthy beyond their wildest imaginings.  And they are ‘sharing’ this wealth with who?  Certainly not the people who made it possible.  They are still struggling to just get back to where they were before they took their assets into this conglomeration.

It is time to tell the truth and give correct names to what is around us.  “The Community Indulging in Massive Greed”: “The Community using the assets of the masses in the process of using the Masses to Acquire Billions of dollars without Sharing”.  “The Community of the Greed  which has discovered the way to maintain and grow its outsized Male Ego by insuring the survival of racism and sexism in a virulent form, masked from the society until that society is enmeshed and unable to extricate itself from the tentacles which enslave them and benefit the investors who created what they call “A Sharing Community.”

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc.  It is the property of Bettina Network, inc. and/or the person who wrote the original blog.

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

The Rev. Nicholas Hood

Tuesday, April 12th, 2016

by: Marceline Donaldson, April 11, 2016

Rev. Nicholas Hood

Rev. Nicholas Hood

Andrew Young, Nicholas Hood

Andrew Young, Nicholas Hood

Some remembrances write themselves.  This one is being written through heavy grief because it is not only a memory of Nicholas Hood, but  long overdue grieving of my youth and someone who contributed majorly to who I am as a Christian today.

Nicholas Hood is in my heart and soul.

The example he set for so many will last a very long time as will the witnessing to his life, his life’s work and his God.  He was one of those who witnessed for his God in a mighty way.  When God calls one to the ordained ministry, God calls the pastor and the prophet.  When it is a genuine call to the ordained ministry the life of that person is never the same and their life forever after reflects that call.  Clearly, Nicholas Hood was called by God to the ordained ministry and he never left the path he walked following that call.

“Suffer the little children to come unto me …………….” was one part of Nicholas Hood’s ministry.  With a group of us in New Orleans, life would never be the same.  We integrated the Congregational Church’s summer camp in the Panhandle.  It was an incredible, life changing experience.  There were times around a camp fire when we heard, as young Black children, what young White children thought of those like us.  Stories of how the White children – teen agers – had been taught that integrated marriages produced spotted children.  Comments I have never forgotten.  That one stood out more than the rest because my grandfather had the genetic disease which causes one’s skin to turn from brown to milky white and I could see it spreading across his hands and in later years his face.  His father was Blackfoot Indian.  His mother was French.  I knew better than to believe the stories I heard around that camp fire, but that one got inside and it took some time before I was able to dig it out.    Nick Hood was there talking to all of us and going into detail on racism and how it works and spreads from one generation to the next.  Those were stories told to their children by parents who were full of fear and afraid their children might bring home a Black boy or girl friend and they were doing everything they could to prevent that and keep the color line unbroken.  What Nicholas Hood did for us, after that night around the camp fire, was to witness using the Gospel to put all of what we heard into a context which was powerful I can still hear parts of it.

Nicholas Hood was there at the end of that camping experience when we were on the way home and we all went into a diner to eat.  We had been so caught up in the experience of being together – White and Black – that the reality outside the camp had not been restored and we sat in the diner causing a bit of an uproar because Blacks were sitting at the counter waiting to be fed.  We were unaware of the sit-ins beginning to happen across the country.  We just wanted lunch.

Nicholas Hood brought a group of us – very young people – with Andrew Young and Martin King – across the backroads of Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama as a Jr. High Choir to sing in White Churches in which Martin preached.  We spent the night in the homes of the White Jr. High Choir members before and after the service and after that when we were all quickly hustled out of the homes where we were staying back into the cars to be driven down the road at high speed watching in front of us seeing Nicholas Hood, Andy and Martin hung in effigy from the trees down the road and behind us a group of very angry whites with rifles coming to run out of town the oversexed Blacks who couldn’t be about anything except a sex orgy sleeping with the young White teenagers whose families offered us hospitality.  That was my first experience being seen, not as a human being but as an oversexed machine to whom friendship wasn’t possible – but was interpreted as some kind of sex thing.  Nicholas Hood was there to put all of that into the perspective of the Gospel.

I didn’t realize how much children absorb of Sunday sermons until I looked back and remembered some of Nicholas Hood’s sermons, which got into my soul.  I couldn’t have been more than 13-14 years old.

I’ve made lots of missteps in my life, but somehow I have always been able to self-correct.  Some compass inside always brought me back to the faith of my childhood and the example of those around me at the time.  To be able to see beyond today and to talk to those who are no longer here is a New Orleans thing and not an easy thing to handle,  but Nicholas Hood kept my deepest secrets which were never shared.  That is a gift and I am so very grateful to the giver.

Rev. Hood came to Minneapolis years ago and we spent an incredible evening going over life and where it had taken us.  An evening I have always cherished.  I’ve watched his life and how he lived it and one thing stands out above all else – his faith in God and his steps, which were ordered by God. He lived to the benefit of so many – me included.  Life happens, but it does not always happen full of love while we are doing God’s work.  We can get so confused as to what God is calling us to do.  What is the work we need to be doing for ourselves and for others?  Nick Hood’s life shows an example of someone who was very clear about the work God called him to do.

By your fruits you shall be known.  By what Nicholas Hood was about all those 92 years speaks louder than anything anyone could say, explain, add to his life’s story. By the fruit of his life – “You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? 17″So every good tree bears good fruit,” …………  You have left clear evidence by your fruit that you are one of God’s own forever, Nicholas Hood.  May God bless and keep you close for eternity.

See also:

Tonight, I Watched My Father Die

http://www.wxyz.com/news/civil-rights-activist-former-detroit-city-council-member-nicholas-hood-sr-dies-at-91

Rev. Hood Sr.

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Everything talked about in this blog and in any other blog in the Bettina Network, inc. is the opinion of the person who wrote the blog and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Bettina Network, inc.

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

You Claim to Believe in God, but do you, really?

Monday, February 15th, 2016

copyright 2016 Bettina Network, inc.

If asked, and it did not include a specific denomination or set of religious beliefs, most people would say – yes, they believe in God.  They would add that this does not mean the traditional Christian God with the long white beard sitting on a throne, but God – the real one!

I would say, even those who claim to believe in the traditional Christian God don’t really believe.  As many of those who claim to believe in Mohammed or Jehovah, don’t.

One of our perennial questions about God is -if there is a God why is there so much evil and destruction in the world? And that is the easiest question to answer – although we generally don’t want to hear, or read, or even come close to the answer.  Keep that in our deepest subconscious where we don’t have to deal with who we are and how we are living our lives.

Who is God?  The only comment I can make about that is – God is!

We have created many trappings around God, none of which we really believe, but we will die defending the right and truth of what we have created, or what our ancestors created and/or contributed to and passed on to us declaring their creation as eternal truth – and called it God, God’s Kingdom, heaven and more.

One small test of our belief system:

If God exists then death as we describe it and believe does not exist.

If God exists then there is another existence which we sometimes describe in our religions, but in which we do not believe because basically we don’t believe in God.  We have created religions with saints and martyrs and heaven and hell and we have peopled our religious universe with a terrain which is amazing and in which we really don’t believe.  And when the chips are down, we don’t believe in any of the supernatural world that we created and put forth as our religious belief..

We have and still fight wars over our religious belief systems.  Isn’t that what is going on with ISIS and other groups in the Middle East and isn’t that what went on with the Christian Wars and all the other wars which we based on religious beliefs that we outlined, but didn’t ever really believe?  We constructed them but knew they were nonsense when we were playing God in our creation and construction time.  If what we created was really God and of God there would be no need to fight over who was right, who was wrong because God would speak to all of us.  But we turned a deaf ear to God’s voice and ignored whatever God had to say because we wanted to control and wanted God out of the way.

Our strongest need seems to be the need for control and the best way to control is to set up a structure with an entity we call God at its head and put everybody under that structure demanding they conform to the behavior system which that structure promotes.  We enforce our system by killing, maiming, ostracizing and shunning those who don’t fit and won’t act the way the religions we developed demands.  Our religious beliefs are clearly not of God because they are full of fear.  They control, grow, and use fear to keep the generations that come after us under the control of our kind – our group.

How do we give ourselves away!  How can you look at us and know we don’t believe in the God we espouse?  We have limited ourselves to what we can see, feel and touch!  We have eliminated everything else because we don’t want anyone to come along to contradict what we have created – especially not anyone of God.

Instead of being a part of God’s universe, we have created a parallel universe that we inhabit; believe in; work towards building. This parallel universe has a god at its head who is really a thinly disguised man.  They say there was a religion eons ago where the god was a thinly disguised woman.  In Israel, there are the remains of a Synagogue whose altar has carved into it a Mr. & Mrs. Jahweh.

I’ve met a few people over the decades who believe God is – who know in ever fibre of their being that there is a God – that God exists.  Generally, the rest of society holds them at arms length and has a difficult time taking them seriously.  These are the people who have seen God.  Or they have talked to those who have died.  Or they have died themselves and been resuscitated. Or they were born with the gift of seeing more than what exists in this physical world.  They are incredible people to be around – especially since the one thing they all seem to lack is the ability to judge other human beings.  They also don’t seem to be able to see human beings as the only beings on this planet who are spiritual, above everything else.

It is so exquisitely beautiful to see beyond the limits we impose upon ourselves and each other because we need to control everything.   It is painful to be around people who declare themselves superior to others and to the rest of the world because of their cultural religion.  To give that up brings us into another reality where very few humans seem to be able to live.

To see the good and the bad in another human being and still love them is special.  It is where God lives.  To give that up to set ourselves up as an imitation of God is such a sacrifice and such a paltry way to exist.  But we have done that, probably for as long as we have been on this earth.

What makes me think that fighting, killing, maiming, torturing others because they don’t believe the way I do is going to please my God and make me one of the martyrs when I die?  What makes me believe that I am doing something other than moving away from God as I insist that my religion is better than.  What makes me believe that God doesn’t want those people to live the lifestyle they have chosen?  What makes me call someone else’s lifestyle sinful and call on the religion I created to justify my call?  What makes me unable to see that maybe God lives that lifestyle, as well as others?

Is that my God bringing down that heavy judgment or my culture/class/ group – the people I hang-out with who make me feel better than everyone else – the people who define what is right and what is wrong – the people who have demolished their own ability to see beyond the physical and into God’s world because they might lose control if we all kept that ability?

Will we ever come to our senses one day or will we realize how wrong we have been when we are at that moment of death!  Hell must be that moment when the realization of what we have done brings us enormous, almost intolerable pain- an eternal pain –  born of the regrets when we realize at that moment that we cannot change how we have lived and we realize the preciousness of the gifts we gave up to take on the self-absorbed life we have lived limited to our own kind.  It is the moment when we realize we really did not believe in God throughout our lives; – when we realize we substituted our own belief and our own religious construct for a beauty and incredible world that we could have lived in and been a part of; – when we see our human sight drop away and in spite of how we have lived, we feel the love of a God who forgives us our iniquities and pardons our weaknesses.  When at that moment, our last human feeling is the one which wishes, if only we could have done the same!  And at that same moment we realize what a poor imitation of God we have been and what a pathetic religion we have created out of our own need instead of having opened ourselves throughout our lives to what should have been.

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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

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Theologians Worldwide Join Us!

Tuesday, February 9th, 2016

What a wonderful resource for you and the rest of the world to add your home to Bettina Network Hedge Schools.

Where does one go to learn about your own religion, or other religions of the world?  Not from books which give a very stilted structure and outdated information, but from someone who is doing research, writing about particular interests of theirs and yours and even more.  Maybe there is someone who has a perspective, belief, expounding on something of interest to you – stay a few days and examine what both of you are doing.

And for the theologian – what a wonderful resource to be able to talk to people serendipitously to try out your thoughts, theories and to know where just ordinary people are coming from and their interest and interpretation of your work.

For the guest traveling the world – stay with a theologian.  Have a breakfast seminar and bring up all the issues you have pondered for decades or maybe within your family for generations.  Only thinkers allowed.  Non-believers welcomed – those of very different religious beliefs and very opposing or complimentary theologies welcome.  A theologian traveling?  Why not stay with a theologian who might be doing something in which you are interested?  Want an intense few days to talk with a theologian in a different area – not at a seminar, not presenting a paper, just the two or three or four of you – hanging out for a couple days?

Call us – email us – get more information about how you might fit and what this is all about.

Breakfast Table Talk – I am sure theologians know about kitchen table talk!  Just look at what that wrought for Martin Luther.

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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

Christmas – A Joyous Occasion?

Tuesday, December 29th, 2015

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2015

We are so accustomed to celebrating holidays with a certain emotion which seems intrinsic to that holiday that we generally don’t think about why or if that emotion is appropriate to the holiday.

Good Friday is clearly a somber occasion and our emotions are quite turned down on that day.  The Churches drape themselves in black and people come to Church to mourn.

Christmas, however, is joyous.  Much gift giving and party attending and celebration.  But is that the appropriate emotion for the ‘celebration’ of the birth of Jesus?

The bible clearly talks about and acknowledges Jesus as God.  Although maybe not God again until the resurrection – because before that Jesus is human and experiencing all of the good and bad of life in human form.

Why did God have to come to earth to subject God’s self to our infirmities, sadnesses, pain, sin and more?  To save us from our sins – so says the bible.  Once the virgin birth happens we celebrate the arrival of God on earth because our sins are forgiven – penance has been paid once and for all times with the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus.

What a horrible thought and what an awful commentary on all of us.  We celebrate that God has had to take human form because we would not stop sinning.  Jesus the Christ brought forgiveness of all of our sins.  We seem to have brought jealousy, anger, resentment, and much more as we go downhill with the ugly side of human nature.

To me, it seems we should sit with  sack cloth in ashes beating our breasts because we brought God down to such a low level.  To celebrate the necessity of such an act and gift because we could or would not act solely out of our better nature is but a small part of Christmas.  The larger part is the tearing apart of our garments because of what we caused the God we supposedly worship to experience.  Caring plus Empathy equals Love, some say.  We care about God, but we have no empathy so how do we get from Caring about God to Loving God?  The way we celebrate Christmas shows our complete lack of empathy.  The way we live shows how strongly we care about what God can give us, which is where we calculate God’s worth.  Which is why we pray.  And, if God doesn’t answer our prayers we question God’s existence.

Our self-absorption and self-centeredness overwhelms every other emotion.  We act as though we are God and God is really our concierge.  Suggest prayer is about something other than the adult version of a child’s prayer for a bicycle will bring down the wrath of the world on your head and not just the Christian world.

We act out the necessity of such a sacrifice, the birth of Jesus,  everyday many times a day, even some two thousand plus years after that original sacrifice.  Parenting gives one a little look into the love God had to have for us to do such a thing.  Sacrifice your adult life to raise your children and give them what they need to get through life to its end and what do you receive in return?  From what we have seen – mostly entitlement from your children.  The moments of genuine love and giving are few and far between.  Sounds like a re-enactment of why God felt it necessary to become human for our sake.  God gave us Jesus and we responded by replacing Jesus with Santa Claus.

Buying all kind of presents from retail shops; getting together with friends and too much alcohol; dreading Christmas dinner with the family because it will end in horribleness; and I could go on and on.  We are doing all of this while there are so many people in pain; at the end of their lives and alone not able to pass along their immortality, which to most of us is our life story.  Why can’t we pass along our life story?  Because no one is listening.  Only celebrities and the rich and famous get to do that.

And it does seem to be getting worse, this ‘celebration’ of Christmas.  It starts right after Halloween and continues through January.  Some of us ease our consciences by making an effort to give a small part of our ‘celebration’ to those in need – and generally that is a very small part, usually limited to this one time Christmas gift giving.

We turn our Churches into concert halls for the holiday and pat ourselves on the back as to how wonderful we are because of it.  We don’t do that by bringing those in need, to whom we dedicate those concerts, into the Church/Concert Hall for an evening joining with others to meet and greet and celebrate and form longer lasting relationships, but by using that Concert Hall atmosphere to indulge our need to lift ourselves above the pact with the nobless oblige feelings that creates in us.

The holiday in Christianity to celebrate would be Easter.  However, Easter passes with barely a note, a present, a celebration. Not many family dinners because we go off to warmer climes or to celebrate other than at home and the less fortunate we give a small bit of our resources to over Christmas does not repeat over Easter.

We don’t stop to think of what a sacrifice it was for God to take on human form and all of the pains and vicissitudes of being human.  If we let those thoughts into our consciousnesses for even a moment our lives would change.  We give lip service to that and move on with our celebration.

Having given us 30 plus years – the way we count time – it was enough.  We rewarded Jesus the Christ, for this gift we celebrate at Christmas of God becoming equal to us all for our sake, with a crucifixion.

One interpretation of the resurrection after the crucifixion is that it could be that God was disgusted with the scene he was a part of and after the horrible experience of the crucifixion, took back this gift of equality and of giving an example to all of humanity of how life could be lived with a different set of values, a different character, a different morality and so got out of here to a better place, leaving us with the mess, corruption, ugliness that we created and continue to wallow in because that seems far better to us than to clean ourselves up and act in a way that would not need such a sacrifice from God.

Not the least of our sins is the one which led us to using the story of Jesus on this earth as a way to strengthen sexism – by declaring Jesus’ birth as a male child the justification for the extreme Paternalism and Male Superiority which pervades our Churches.

Next to that is the fact that we took Jesus’ birth and life as a reason to reinforce racism by portraying  ‘him’ with White skin and softly flowing blondish-brown hair.  Would that be shoring up the racism we practice?

This is all such a pattern of how we live.  Didn’t we take God-given food grown with sunlight, air, rain and turned it into something horrible with the introduction of chemicals, machinery to change its texture, color and nutritional value because man could make more money when its sold – bought cheap from the farmer, ‘ processed’ and sold for a fortune to everyone else?

Don’t we continually destroy the beautiful universe around us?  It is so beautiful to look up at the sky; to see the flowers; to enjoy the life giving oxygen of the trees – until we cut them up, cut them down to make money?  And guns? and so many artificial things we don’t need, but work ourselves to death to obtain, neglecting that which is real and of God?

How long, O God, must we suffer the pangs and vicissitudes of our humanity.  It doesn’t look at all changed over these two thousand plus years.  We are still a sinful humanity.  What did your birth change – really?

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Ed Note:  This is a very Christian message.  We thought long and hard before putting it in the blog, but our need to be open to the world far overtook our concerns about printing it.

We welcome other religions to send us blogs on their thoughts, prayers and lifestyles.  We will print them either with your name or without and if you request, we will put a copyright on your work.

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

 

Dogs = Emotional Slavery

Wednesday, October 28th, 2015

copyright 2015 Bettina Network, inc.

We are and have been for hundreds of years a society/world of slaves.  Either you are a slave or a slave master.  Many have tried to break free, but in some part or parts of life, that historical connection gets us and changes us from a free people to a people enslaved to each other and to the things which bind us.  What is that new word that has entered our vocabulary in a terrifying way, and growing fast, intruding on life in many cities, suburban areas, country towns – human trafficking?

We enslaved Africans.  However, long before the enslavement of Africans we enslaved the Hebrews and we can go back to many other peoples and animals who we enslaved.  Is there something wrong with the human spirit, that we cannot be whole and a people functioning on their own two feet and even reaching out to help others?

Our history seems to say that we have to destroy and desecrate others so that our needs can be met without our putting forth too much energy and effort in the process.  We must make sure those who serve are categorized and marked so that their role in our society is clear and definitely defined as subservient and never even close to being equal!  Do our security needs demand such?

Enslavement  is a necessity because we need to make sure our needs  are never left unfulfilled even for a little while.  We need to make sure that whatever – whoever – we have designated and oppressed and labeled to make their purpose and use only  the fulfillment of our needs is close by and unable to function except at our bidding.  The slave’s food, shelter and even their ability to take another breath depends upon our continuous need for them and our willingness to fulfill their basic needs because their enslavement becomes a part of our identity!

For some time now, it has become more and more noticeable that we have emotionally enslaved dogs.  They are a group, which in the wild run in pacts with a pact leader.  We have taken advantage of that and become the pact leader to our dogs – even if that is only one dog.

What we demand in return is total unadulterated worship.

We are becoming more and more isolated from one another – almost a reflection of what is happening in space as the planets and all the otherworldly objects are moving further and further away from one another.  So to are we as humans doing the same thing.

Because we need to feel a closeness to something or to someone, we have chosen to make that the dog.  We don’t have to return to the dog what the dog gives to us.  When we make an attempt to respond to what we are given,  it doesn’t have to be fully and  when we have other things to do, we can go our way and ignore that animal which has been so faithful to us. We have even justified killing the dog when it has outlived its usefulness.

Of course, not everyone reacts in this way, some are the exception.   The role of the exception – which is meant to disprove the rule – only proves, to those watching closely enough – that the rule is rigid.  Kind of like what is happening at this tail end of racism.

We are moving to formalize this emotional slavery of dogs by naming an increasing number of them “therapy dogs”.  Dogs, whose mission it is, in this society, to be to others what normal human beings no longer are capable of being.  Our own lives have become so “busy” that we don’t have time anymore to reach out to those in need.  We no longer get any satisfaction out of giving to others in need.  We are delegating those jobs more and more either to society’s underclass or – even better – we have discovered the “therapy dog.”  Society’s underclass were the people to whom we entrusted the care of our elderly, sick, mentally challenged, seriously handicapped.  They also served to be there and help the dysfunctional.  But, they are getting to be a nuisance, expecting equality, beginning to be unhappy with their lot, being ‘undocumented’ but needing and beginning to demand more; no longer being able to quietly serve the rest of society making do with less than humans need to survive.

That elderly person whose family has left them to be cared for by others will buy them a dog.  Or that person, in serious emotional need will find their own dog to replace their human family and friends.  Or, someone else buys that “therapy dog” so that deserted person has love and affection and does not have to depend upon another human being and does not have to be beholden or give to another human being in return for any affection given to them.  What a new form of “freedom”.

What kind of society is that creating?

Dogs have been trained to pee and shit wherever they feel like taking care of their bodily functions.  They can do this with impunity as long it is away from the area where their owners live.  On someone else’s property?  Around the trees in the city – which can then get sick and infect all of the other trees? Dogs have been trained to leave their bowel movement wherever it falls, which means, wherever they decided to drop it, and if it affects the health of children who come along and come into contact with the dogs feces, the dogs owner walks away doing nothing and with very little to no responsibility for what their dogs have done.  The more upscale the area, the more infected with dog feces it becomes.  The more upscale the area the more enslaved dogs one finds.

At the end of winter and the snow melts, one sees enormous amounts of dog feces on the ground, where the dog owners have allowed their dogs to drop their “business” and walk away leaving it.  The snow covers everything so why not?  The small gardens all over a lovely area with flowers and others kinds of growth where the dog is encouraged to hop in, do their ‘business’ and hop out with the owners walking away leaving the dog feces to infect whoever and whatever comes along – including other dogs when the feces is diarrhea feces and another dog sniffs, eats or otherwise interacts with that diarrhea laden feces.  Many dogs are infected with disease in this way.  One dropping of diarrhea feces – given a couple days – generates many more droppings of diarrhea feces from other dogs who inhabit the area.  When the leaves fall, the same phenomena happens and just before the snow falls to continue the process.

Parks, which once belonged to children, who could run, jump, fall down, now belong to dogs who run, jump, drop their feces and play with their owners since this is their one time of ‘freedom’ during the day.  The other part of the day they are locked in a room; kept in a basement; confined to a dog cage; or etc.  The more privileged dogs are kept behind a fence in a small yard.

Slavery of any kind breaks down a society in the most desperate ways and this emotional slavery of dogs is no exception.  The most dangerous part of this slavery is our refusal to see and/or name it for what it is.  We call them “pets”.  Animals were not made to be the “pets” of humans. They have their own lives and go their own ways except when they are kept enslaved and begin to understand their well being – their food supply – their shelter are all dependent upon that human slave owner who demands that they wag their tails vigorously when that human owner approaches, who demands that they jump for ‘joy’ all over the human to show excitement that they have not been abandoned to a cruel and unresponsive world that treats dogs without owners viciously.  Need I describe more…………………?

And here come the denials!

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

 

 

 

A Quotation

Tuesday, October 20th, 2015

“Don’t Take the presence of the storm to indicate the absence of God.”

The Rev. T. D. Jakes

The Rev. T. D. Jakes

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

A Teaching/Learning Community

Thursday, September 3rd, 2015

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2015

Join us as we grow the Bettina Network Hedge Schools.

What do you know?

Use your home to pass on to others what has been taught to you and look into becoming a Bettina Network Hedge School Facilitator.

What have you experienced in this life

which are lessons you can share with others!

What has life taught you?

pass it on!

One way to pass along who you are and your life lessons to others is through Bettina Network Hedge Schools – be a part of bringing about this world wide teaching/learning community.

How about your talents?

Sewing, Knitting, Crochet, Photography, Cooking, Design, Gardening, Calligraphy, Religion, Spirituality, Political History Philosophy, Psychiatry – what have we not included that is your passion?

Use your talents as a Bettina Network Hedge School Facilitator.  Use your home to welcome guests who would like to know more about what you do; what you’ve learned; what you teach by staying with you for a few days to absorb your lifestyle, while they go about doing other things.

What is your legacy?

Here is your opportunity to put together the legacy you want to pass along and to be known for.

Piano, organ, other instruments, vocalist – open your home to those traveling for other reasons who also would like to study with you for a couple days or maybe even a week before they go back to their other lives bringing an experience like none other.

Each one teach one –

Your guests come to learn from you and to teach you.  And you wind up with the extra income which will allow you to do things you weren’t sure you could afford – or that you wanted to do, but your money and position got in the way of your being effective.  Let the world come to your home and be a part of an extensive and widespread “behind the hedge” school.

You and your guests become a part of Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community with the ability to access deep into the Bettina Network, inc.

And to those traveling the world – why stay in an Inn, Hotel, Bed & Breakfast or other accommodation when you can stay in a Bettina Network Hedge School ?????


Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com

 

 


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