Tuesday, August 4, 2026

The Alternative View

 Who wrote that namby-pamby Blog yesterday!  

Walking in the world with acts of kindness and compassion…  

We are all One…

What a load of crap! 

What is he thinking…  

Feels more like a War out there!  

People are protesting and plotting against each other… 

Calling each other Demons and Deplorables… 

People are suffering…  

The prices of everything are going up… 

Have you seen the prices of groceries and gas!!!

Real wages are down…  

Who has time for contemplation…

We are just trying to survive here… 

That guy just makes me angry!  


Both these individuals live inside…  

This Ego contains multitudes…  


Yes, I absolutely agree with voting out the GOP…

We need both House and Senate, then we can impeach Drumph and then the little V…   


But I also worry about the Democrats…  

With the rising antisemitism within the Democratic party, and the rabid hatred of the those that do not believe in their perhaps radical progressive politics…  


I do not see a way to reconcile these groups more toward a compassionate center…  

I do not see a rational middle ground of respect for each side… 


I found these two articles in this last issue of the Atlantic of August 2026 to be incredibly fascinating.   


The first one entitled:   “The Demons of Maryville” by Stephanie McCrummen, tells the tale of a married couple of “charismatic Christians” who moved to this small town and founded a church that moved to a storefront nearby a liberal bookstore, and started accusing the bookstore owner of demonism, the author was using this story as an illustration of a wider movement of Christian sects seeing widespread satanic activity and needing to engage in spiritual warfare(!)   A subtext that I noticed was of many individuals falling into trance states and hearing the voice of G-d and having feeling of great peace.  Perhaps a similar mind state as those seeking contemplation and arriving to a place of feeling we are all One, but instead arriving at a very different destination where they know evil where they see it, and feeling these other people need to be saved or destroyed…  

Horrifying…  


The second article:  “The Slave Ship and the Mayflower: Can the story of America be told by two vessels?” by James Traub, is a review of a new book by David S. Reynolds.  Mentions the book Albion’s Seed, documenting 4 British cultures, Puritan, Cavalier, Quaker, and Scotch-Irish, seeding the new world and resulting in 4 different American cultures often at odds with each other.  Reynolds argues that there were only 2 lineages, the Puritans arriving on the Mayflower and the Cavaliers arriving on the slave ship the White Lion.  Traub writes “…Reynolds contrasts his two on ideological and ultimately moral grounds.  He presents American history as a perpetual struggle between a Puritan North dedicated to liberty and equality and a Cavalier South predicated on hierarchy and domination.”  Ultimately Traub does not buy Reynolds’ thesis.  

Nonetheless, even if the origin story is untrue, there still seems to be a growing divide in America.  Perhaps not quite as black and white as Reynolds presents.  


As a self-designated Heretic, I must take up a multitude of sides, depending on the day and my mood swings, somedays I just like taking up those sides that might seem to be most unpleasant.    

Unfortunately, it seems as though all these various groups wish to do is shake up the System, because they are all unhappy…  

Yet, for me in the end, as my friend once said about his psychedelic work, “I just really want Unicorns and Rainbows for everybody…”  

So, what are the steps we can take to be more of one family, how can we take steps to sit down with one another and hammer out peaceful solutions, so we can work together for a common good?  

I do not know the answers…  

I am hoping there may arise leaders that can bring both sides together… 

Those that might stop the labeling of people as Demons and Deplorables… 

Those who might help us see that we are all in the same Lifeboat…  

Bringing us more together over time…  

Namaste


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