Deeply embedded emotions of country
A range of emotions came over me today, most of which weren’t about Trump individually.
I saw President Donald Trump’s October 2, 2020, 12:54 a.m. tweet announcing he and Melania had tested positive for coronavirus soon after it was issued. I posted from my phone with one eye open at 1:09 a.m.
It was strange because I wasn’t watching Twitter. Something startled me out of sleep, I looked at the phone, and there it was.
A range of emotions came over me, most of which weren’t about Trump individually.
I saw someone tweet about E-6Bs in the air over the east and west coasts, capable of communicating with our nuclear ballistic missile submarines around the globe even if D.C. were destroyed in a preemptive nuclear strike. I hadn’t heard of those before. It turns out they were not launched in response to Trump’s diagnosis, but they are impressive examples not just of the military power this nation holds, but of the fact that there are people who stand guard over us while we sleep, mostly unseen, unknown, and unthanked. I thank them for their service.
Throughout the day, those positive emotions of country flowed despite the despicable celebrations and hopes for Trump’s death by so many ‘blue check marks’ and others whose hatred for Trump has destroyed their own humanity.
The death of a president in office is a national tragedy. I would have said the same thing if Obama had died in office, despite my years of opposition to him.
It took me until the evening to source that deeply embedded emotion.
John F. Kennedy was assassinated when I was four years old. It was the first emotion I remember — Being that young I’m not sure if I remember the event, or remember what my mother told me about the emotion I felt. She wrote out and mailed a two-or-three sentence note I ‘dictated’ to the Kennedy children telling them I felt sorry that they lost their dad. She made a copy of the note and showed it to me repeatedly over the decades. I have the note somewhere, but it’s one of those things I find when I’m not looking for it, and can’t find when I am looking for it.
The news unearthed that emotion, much as did other events such as the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan.
Statistically, Trump has a 95% or better likelihood of survival and recovery. Yet the emotions are there.
It’s not about Trump the individual, it’s about the country. I wish more people understood that, but I can’t say I’m surprised in this political culture.
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I believe that Rush had similar feelings when he heard about the President’s diagnosis.
Living through history is – to put it mildly – often stressful.
Think about Americans just recently as the Great Depression and World War Two.
We have it relatively easy. But sometimes you have to leave your comfort zone and fight for your freedom – or lose it.
Right how, we are in a civil war that is heating up: it’s American citizens against the sickening swamp that is the top .5% of our country. It includes both political parties, the top hierarchy of the military and the rats infesting every agency of our government.
One man stands between us and tyranny: Donald J. Trump. We need to stand by him like our very lives depend on it, because they do.
The left/swamp/islamic axis means business. We’d better mean business, too. If we have to leave half our nation behind, so be it.
<iFormer Twitter CEO says some capitalists 'going to be the first' to be 'shot in the revolution:
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/former-twitter-ceo-capitalists-shot
I remember this (paraphrased) exchange from early in LotR:
Frodo: “I wish this burden had not fallen to me.”
Gandalf: “So wish all who live to see such times.”
Even in self-defense we do not hope for someone’s death.
I’ll toast their lives, their work, their success, and wish them fair weather and following seas.
Some people will soon not only going to ‘wish’ for their political opponents’ deaths, but they’re actually going to be trying to kill them.
That’s what a civil war looks like. And the left has started it.
I got up late last night and found myself watching something I didn’t expect, Bishop Sheen’s 1956’s talk about the evil of Communism.
In it, he talked about how the left, or rather the radical, becomes indifferent to life and how they train themselves to ignore the suffering of others in order to achieve their agenda at all costs.
We have raised such a generation of haters of life and liberty in our country. They lack compassion and empathy towards others such that they can, with malice, burn a city to the ground in the name of someone who died in the hands of their sworn enemy.
They will do so and call it good and not be disgusted by the evil they have done.
Their so called enemy never did them any real harm. In fact, that enemy kept them safe from the outrages of criminals and ill respecters of the law. In fact, this enemy establishes order against the chaos that tries daily to invade the lives of the ordinary citizen that they mingle with, yet despise and call deplorable.
Here is that lecture. I really encourage you all to watch it and share it. It truly explains where we are today and whom we are really facing when engaging Antifa and BLM …
The Man Who Knew Communism Best!
I hope the president recovers fully and rapidly, both for his sake and for that of the country.
If he does, it might also help free people from the panic that keeps them from thinking clearly about the virus, whose actual risks are not zero but are low.
Maybe, but they’ll probably tell themselves that Trump got super-special treatment and meds, which they wouldn’t be able to get.
Biden derided Trump for being in the bunker… again… projection. Trump probably got the Wuhan Flu by NOT hiding. There are risks in living. There are risks in facing the daunting challenges he has faced. Trump has faced them head on, WhuFlu will be one more thing to beat. G_d heal DJT we pray.
Remember the left derided President Trump when there were riots in DC for being in the bunker, even though it was a short time.
They hate. It is their normal level of emotion against the right.
I think it comes from their own inner conflict of the opposing views of life they hold as principles. It is a mental issue which they accept whatever conflict there is because the leaders call for it, and such conflicting points leads to hate because deep inside it cannot resolve.
Eventually we will have to start curing their hate.
Their hate is intractable, if not terminal.
Hopefully, bullets won’t turn out to be the only cure.
I think your sentiments are emblematic of the kind of persons needed to keep our republic, Professor. So, hopefully, the number in the populace is, despite no paucity of crucial indicators/suggesters to the contrary, actually well reserved and sufficient. Long live virtue and gratitude, decency and gravity. Menschlichkeit forever.
It’s the manner in which the great warrior Achilles received the grieving father of a slain Hektor, Priam: with strength and resolve, but no less humanely; so, with empathy.
Real men practice empathy, among other things.
I also want to express my deepest and sincerest wishes to the president and the first lady for a speedy recovery from illness and return to their unique, appreciated, and very needed style of leadership via robust health and well-being.
What tests of our national character we continue to face in this, a year of years!
What it turns out is that our ‘national character’ is corrupt from the very top all the way to the street. (Those paid rioters would riot for anyone who paid them.)
Imagine what historians are going to write about PDJT and his BUSTING of the most corrupt government/education/media complex in any democratic nation’s history. We are more like a dictatorship than we ever imagined.
I hear you. I’ve felt the deterioration my entire life. Our genes and experiences, our identifications with certain values — some went one way; others, another way. Is it 50/50?
It seems like basically just two — “the decent and the indecent”.
Could it be nature’s design, such polarized derangement of the one — just a variation of the same, recycled, and repeated theme?
Seriously, or what is it, God v Satan? I’m asking, in natural terms, especially, if it’s hands-down explainable in that fashion.
Why do so many people fear or shun what they know to be good, at least not wrong or crazy?
Evidently, the Minneapolis City Council, a Communist cell if there ever was one today in America, believed in defunding, reimagining the nature of, the police — and its head, a devout Commie, has a master’s in urban planning, if I recall correctly, from UC-Berkeley. But anybody with sense knows, in advance via experience, or even reasonably enough, a priori, to have an effective government, you need law enforcement, regardless of the source and nature of the law. Crime will flourish in its absence. Only now they realize, they misunderstood the situation. What situation, human nature? And hoi polloi misunderstood this, too?
The will to be led, really led, is waning everywhere, it seems. Fools are convincing the many only because the many want to be deceived.
Nietzsche was right. He said just that. I’m still asking, though, why so damn dumb? Is it the pot, the hydrocodone, all the anesthetized self-pity, the sheer apathy? I’m still asking.
There is an enormous ‘honor system’ in America. It supposedly starts at the top, and works its way way down to the likes of office snacks sold at workplaces on the honor system.
Bill and hillary clinton went crazy when they discovered it while in the White House, completely corrupting everything they touched. Bush did little to combat it, and obama completed the mission.
Our government is COMPLETELY corrupted. Not an agency within it is trustworthy. We thought we could completely trust the military, until we found out about rats like mattis, mcchrystial, and the like. How bad is it? Read this:
https://militarycorruption.com/ronald-clark/
Now that PDJT has busted the game, we’re at war with the swine ripping us off and sending our young to die in wars that line their pockets. That we went to war with Iraq for their oil is leftist nonsense. Nonetheless, we have learned by just by going to war, the bastards that took our trust and lined their pockets with the blood of our young.
The left was right about there being ‘fat cats’ at the top, but they had the story wrong: not even they realized the corruption rife in Congress (pelosi, wassernman schultz, etc) in the FBI, CIA, IRS (the scummy lois lerner’s name should never be forgotten)and the like.
We’ve learned there is ONE politician in the nation we seem to be able to trust 100%: Donald Trump. The others are not merely disposable, but should be disposed of.
“We are more like a dictatorship than we ever imagined.”
And there in lies the challenge, the push back, the coming re-election of Pres. Trump. He has pulled back the curtain and thrown down the gauntlet. My prayer for our President is now for his health and safety. As GOD provided for David taking on Goliath, let our President be so blessed to continue the battle to hold on to the democracy created and provided by our Constitution. May we share that blessing to continue our support for him by doing, voicing and making it our fight too.
The operative word is “fight”.
After what we’ve seen unleashed upon us, we have to realize the word means physical action.
We’ll get there.
It’s been a very difficult year all around. I keep writing about the creepiness of watching friends I’ve known for many years transform into mindless zombies over politics. TDS is very real and infects people who otherwise would be defined by their goodness. But it is so strong that they allow it to destroy their closest family relationships. It becomes their defining trait, their “raison d’etre”. They are on a mission. When exactly did they lose their grip on their priorities?
If only it was just a bad movie. But how many of us are having to completely overhaul our lives for our own sanity? I never thought I would be living through an attempted communist takeover. It’s happening everywhere.
TDS Pandemic, incurable and deadly.
Pasadena Phil,
Recently I’ve come to conclude that we are witnessing a massive wave of demonic possession – literally. I fully recognize that persons “not of faith” will dismiss, if not ridicule such a statement.
So be it; I will bear witness as I see it.
As I see it is that we are approaching the consummation of a decades long Satanic drive to “fundamental transform” our divinely inspired nation into secular nothingness.
Whether of Biblical prophesy or not, we are now by this election in a battle of Biblical scale between evil and good, that will determine the fate of this country, and by extension the entire world.
Hopefully we on the side of good can and will prevail peacefully, lest we not again have to rally under arms singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
I can’t dismiss it yet, nor should it ever be outright.
An ancient aliens hypothesis, while not actually competitive with the Devil/poly-entity-demonic one in my view, deserves a true hearing, as well.
Even a non-ancient, multiple-species and aggregate alien-visitation/establishment/cryptically conflicted but dominant hypothesis deserves some further understanding.
Just give me reported and cross-verified facts, circumstances, witness accounts, especially physical evidence like the Navy’s recent acknowledgement of UAP (and secretly USOs?), and I’m there — listening, trying hard to understand and accept, and willing to be substantially persuaded toward a whole, new paradigm — especially one entirely consistent with a theistic-v-demonic framework and metaphysic — explaining our current sociopolitical anesthesia/twilight-sleep state.
Phil – I watched in astonishment as one male friend of 40+ years tells another friend that she is not a Christian because he believes she supports the President…on Facebook…not in private…on Facebook. The lady friend is the most Christian and caring person, she was devastated.
I’ve had folks telling me for ages that if I was really Christian I would support all the leftist social programs because otherwise I’m not being charitable, and isn’t that the most important thing. Of course they tend to conflate free abortions with charity.
They also can’t or won’t understand the difference between real charity and charity forced at the point of a gun.
So I just deal with lots of non-Christians telling me that I’m a failed Christian because I don’t follow their incorrect definition of Christianity.
The corrupt at the top have brainwashed an enormous amount of the population. It took years, and a lot of money coming from Communist China (bribing just about every American lawmaker, sports figure, media outlet and entertainment outlet).
The left also created 2 generations of useful idiots, by training them to be narcissists. In other words, if the useful idiots parrot the party line, they can think of themselves as superior, and be excused from any moral and criminal transgressions, like pedophilia, treason, stealing, taking bribes and embezzlement of public funds.
The problem now is: how are these infantile narcissists going to face their incredible stupidity buying into all this? – In particular, lazy, narcissistic ‘me too/participation trophy’ students with worthless degrees who are seeing their college years quickly fade into the past. And black Americans utterly ruined by generations of the welfare deep state. (You just KNOW a good chunk of the trillions in welfare made it into the pockets of the lawmakers who created it and perpetuated it – not to mention the race hustlers like jackson and sharpton.)
The only answer I can come up with is to keep an open door, and not judge those who come in from the leftist cold. Embrace them, but DO NOT FULLY TRUST THEM – EVER. They proved too weak easy to corrupt.
The healing could be faster than we imagine – if the likes of AG Barr gets off his fat ass and indicts criminals infesting the highest parts of our government.
If hillary clinton dies without facing justice, we lose.
You are a good soul Professor. I think about the state of this nation, and my eyes water.
We lost a dear friend on Monday to lung cancer. He spent the last months of his life locked away in his house.
The entire country is ill. It looks like this was by design, and that makes me feel even worse.
Thank you Professor Jacobson. This is why I read your blog every single day.
God has a plan.
I don’t know what the election holds, but the SCOTUS is about to be transformed for an entire generation. I’m dancing a jig on that. GOP…don’t fuck this up, because you won’t get this chance again.
Our house and my 4 walls have had the best year ever.
We’re in Wa with a grade school kid. Inslee is an idiot. Most of the rest of the state is in hell with remote learning. Our kid is in a home spun neighborhood pod with 4 other kids. They are having their best year ever. Seriously- I’m fine with them keeping the schools shut because we are having a blast. My wife and the other pod moms got together last week and they’ll all of the same opinion.
I don’t know if this is God’s way of sifting souls, but I’m glad to be on top.
Feelings. Nothing more than feelings.
For millennia, the human species has been working to mitigate feelings with reason. Critical thinking was pushed since the ancient Greeks, in the West. Science is based upon using intellect to determine when to give into emotion and to what extent. But, back in the late 1960s, that all changed. Reason and intellect were shoved onto the back burner of human endeavor. The new watch words were ‘do what you feel’. We, as a society no longer view events intellectually. We view them viewed through thee prism of how they make us feel, or how we want or expect them to make us feel, emotionally.
Take the diagnosis, of a person whom we love or admire, with a potentially deadly disease. We do not want them to die, but we also do not wish them to suffer needlessly. If the disease is potentially fatal, we may feel that putting that person out of his or her misery is the best course of action. If we at on this feeling, the person is dead without us ever knowing if he would have suffered needlessly. However, if we apply reason to the situation, we may come to a far different conclusion. How deadly is the disease? What is the likelihood of long term problems which will seriously degrade quality of life? How much time do we have to gather data and make an informed decision? And, are we really more concerned about ourselves than about the person with the disease?
People felt that Ofc. Chauvin caused the death of George Floyd by cutting off oxygen to Floyd’s brain. Hordes of people made serious eciion based upon that assumption, which was based upon how people “felt” upon seeing the video. However, once the incident was investigated, scientifically, evidence showed, rather conclusively, that Chauvin did not cause Floyd’s death, but rather a chemical cocktail, ingested by Floyd, was thee cause of his death. Yet, people re dead and billions of dollars in property has been destroyed over false assumption generated by “feelings”.
At this point, there appears to be little cause for concern over the the health of the President. The situation may change for the worse, for thee better or stay the same. Have your feeling stand down and stand by.
To Legacy Republican: Super post and link; thank you. I’m a great fan of Fulton Sheen. You probably know of his “Communism and The Conscience of the West,” “God and Intelligence,” and his “Philosophy of Science.” Also there is “The Quotable Fulton Sheen.” (I’m such a fan of Sheen that I’m a co-editor of the last book listed — available for a song at Abe Books online.) Once again a thoughtful post. Cheers
Professor, I was sitting in a Geometry class taught by T Lester Brown, when we were told of Kennedy’s assassination. Some of my female classmates started weeping and I felt the urge as well. I know now that my world and the US had lost its innocence.
Fast forward to September 11, 2001, and the crushing blow that our precious country took that day. I remember being filled with emotion with the loss of life that fateful day. My sense of lost innocence was confirmed that day.
Fast forward again to the events we are experiencing as a nation today, there are open hate and bigotry now within our great land. Its as though the fabric of our great Nation is being torn in two. I am sad.
Thank you for your thoughts here. I am encouraged. I am praying for President Trump and his family and those in his administration dealing with the WuFlu.
I am prepared for November 3 and the days after…