Iron Chip

If anyone is wavering over the question of letting the government chip you, just watch Iron Man. There are a couple of scenes with Jeff Bridges and a little car alarm remote-looking device.

A Parasitical Philosophy

The left/right paradigm under Reaganism taught us that the Democratic party was the party of big government and the Republicans wanted to reduce the size of government and set us free of that. The two parties had the roles of adversary and savior. This was quite an easy fit, philosophically, for Evangelical Christianity. In fact the two have fit so well in so many areas of life and society that to many they are seemingly inextricable. If you’re wondering why there is such insanely strong support amongst many in churches for the policies and the policy makers, that is your answer. This is why you should question everything you’re told whether from podium or pulpit.

Future Shock

About 10-15 or so years ago I saw a bumpersticker that said, “Think Globally, Act Locally.” I want to say it was around 1995-1996 but I am not sure. Clinton was president and those of us reared under Reaganism had been fed this line that the Democrats, the party of “Big Gov,” were going to lead us into an Orwellian world by creating a big centralized aristocracy of taxation, interdependence and statism and lead us to a world government. And since I was also part of the blob of End Times Evangelicanism, out of that world government was going to come the Anti-Christ and everything associated with that tangent. Of course, through all this, the Republicans were to be our saviors.

I didn’t like the notion of globalism that I was reading into that bumpersticker. I wanted America to hold on to what I saw as her nationalism. I thought this was a liberal who was leading us down a greased global path to the apocalypse and needed to be voted against. I thought it was a silly notion of a utopian future that involved some sort of socialism or communism and would never work. That feeling was disingenuous. She (I think it was a woman driving that car) was tired of the world around her being constant crap and wanted a future without that. Even though I criticized her, I was doing the same thing. The content has been different but all my life I have looked to the future. Over the years there have been various driving forces, but each has had to do with a desire to rebel against something I couldn’t control.

That woman, if she’s been paying attention, is probably trying to process the reality that is taking shape in the name of the globalism she wanted. My own “future shock” has had more to do with the seemingly diametric leap that many in the Republican party have taken in the last 20 years. What I mean by that is I am hearing things from people who were my friends in the 1980s that I never thought I’d hear. I’ve seen support for plans and programs that we all would have sworn would come out of Democratic circles. That’s what happens when you demonize your opponent and think you’re drawing strength from seeing them with horns, tail and pitchfork.

It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I realized that every four to eight years we seem to keep electing people from the same fraternity and the country just kind of moves on without things really getting any better. What I didn’t understand until very recently is that I was looking at things the wrong way. There is a left-right paradigm of sorts. Its movement is an oscillation driving a motor powering a limousine which is carrying a cadre of super-wealthy on to something of their desire while we are the little bits making up the asphalt of their road. As more and more of us awaken to these realities those passengers in that limo are going to find themselves hitting more and more potholes.

So I wish that woman well wherever she is. I’m not saying I would have agreed with her had I understood what I understand now. I just realize that I was wrong to criticize her when I was just as misled, if not more.