Religion Relapse

How odd it is—as a 21st-century scenario sets itself up—
we see the world gone mad preparing again to erupt.
So unforeseen it was that our great Argument of the Ages,
the dogmatic contentions of cadres and sages
should abandon the trappings of intelligent delusion
and revert to jihadic religious intrusion.

Europa intelligentsia had decided that God was indeed dead,
and they talked for a few generations of what to do instead:
whether a capitalist path or the communist wrath,
then a communist road or a big fascist goad—
And in the midst of all that
polarizing ideological spat—
we waged two world-class wars to settle the matter
of who should wield power and who should be scattered.

You know the drill;
it persists among us still:
Who should be in charge?
a strong-arm few or the people at large—
a fascist state or some proletarian rabble,
by authoritarian edict or sectarian babble? 

After all the holocaust horror and gulag gangrene
we plummet again to mucky slog of humanic bad dream.
Obsessive jihadi encircle the world;
believing their fanatic flag will fully unfurl.
Back at the hub the elite are perplexed,
while their technocrat cadres compute the complex
as the widening gyre of the jihadi fire
leaps higher and higher and higher and higher.  

Perhaps the privileged, enlightened elite
should renew communion with the (wo)man on the street
whose faith in a sacrificial, Prince of Peace deity

brings resurrection instead of  jihad enmity.
Could it be that the God who was tossed aside
by the godless secular bureaucratizing tide
is actually the same eternal entity
who spoke our world out of chaos infinity?
Oh, let us recover some providential indemnity,
and by this testament regain our serenity.
After the Enlightenment, the Ideology, the Decline and the Fall,
Think about it the repentative way: Selah, y’all.

King of Soul

Man isn't fixing this.

Man isn't fixing this either.

The notion that human beings can fix everything is the oldest fallacy in the world.

Now somebody please tell Uncle Bernie and and aunt Hillary, along with all the other thousands of dhimmi Demo talking heads with their hot air gun-control prescriptions.

And don't knock me for praying about it.

From the tower of Babel to the hanging gardens of Babyl, all the way through this present haranguing buzz-babble of ubiquitous blusterers, and even going back through multi-generational empires piled upon historical detritus as high as the sky on Ozymandian hubris, and even up to our present era, etcetera etcetera, including but not limited to the decline of Ozzy & Harriet, the historical significance of which is accentuated by the onslaught of Ozzy Ozburn biting heads off bats out of hell, up to and including the misdeeds of previous generations, such as the rebellious Nazi rabble who tried to take over in 1923--with their beer hall putsch-- all the way through the rubble of post-Hitler Berlin, then the uncovered abuses of Birkenau, Dresden overkill, and as earlier reprobates would demonstrate-- Antiochus, Nero, Torqamada, Ted Bundy, Richard Speck, Jeffrey Dahmer, Diem, Lee Oswald, Jack Ruby, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Moham Atta, including previous perpetrators who administered the long archipelago of Stalinist gulags-- all this malingering madness strung out upon the ages of Man like a profusion of Abu Ghraib grab bags, or an indictment in a Chicago murder trial-- you can count em on both hands in a New York minute, while even now more roundtheclok news erupts from San Bernadino, reporting on those unforeseen blind-sided developmental shortfalls that could not--in fact never could have--anticipated the true motives, intent, and depraved behavior of an American-born homo jihadicus and his wife gone ballistic.

This bloody business will cease when Birnam Wood doth move against Dunsinane, and Democrats take control of Guns in the game.

Them that want to fix this game--they know not how to aim.

Ask Maximilien Robespierre about how to fix the human problem. Or if you can't get a hold him, find the Das Kapital guy and get his take on it.

After Monsieur Marx thought people could fix the capitalist world by inciting revolution, through which the workers of the world could violently take control of agriculture, industry, government and pretty much every other damned thing--after that, things did not work out as planned. Stalin's manipulations of the emerging Soviet system degenerated by purge and dirge irretrievably and almost undetectably into the imprisoned depravity of human gaggery and thus gulagery.

And if that was not bad enough, the hole damn slippery slope desecration was exacerbated--yea, I say unto thee even enabled-- by the ascendancy of say-it-aint-so Joe's dachau-developing doppelganger aka the little Austrian corporal with the ratty moustache who was running around giving orders like he owns the place.

Whatever became of all those great German and Russian minds--those baton-wielding maestros, beautiful ballerinas--Goethe, Schiller, Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky et al?

Thrown under the bus, trampled under the tank.

Along came the Communists and the Nazis, marching around giving orders like they own the place.

Such is the arc of history.

Now it's the Jihadis and the Climate-bangers. Both of them wanting to take control of everything that happens. Micromanage the world.

The arc of history--21st century version.

And they make fun of us religious for wanting to build an Ark?

The Climate-bangers said, in Kyoto and Copenhagen, in Lima and Paris, there'll be melting icecaps, rising tides, floods in low places, in a Global Warming apocalypse.

An Ark to float over the arc of history--that's what I'm looking for. Or if not an Ark, a train.

In spite of all our peoples' best intentions, things fall apart, and rarely work out as planned. Then before you know what's coming down, unforeseen demagogix he come along, summoning up the latent will to power so he can trump all the incompetence and failures and fallacies of the inconstant human heart-soul-mind with his bullishitting hype, convincing everybody that under his direction they can fix everything that's going wrong. By deceitful demagoguery he takes control, a la Mussolini, Mao, or Mengele, or even that misguided misfit Joe McCarthy, for that matter.

And that includes you Bernie. You're just as deluded as the Donald, but coming from the other extreme.

Bernie the yin, Donald the yang.

Man will not be fixing this, nor woman. You got that Hillary?

Checks and balances--if we can keep them-- of a tri-part government might help a little.

Don't knock me for praying about this. There's a star in the night sky and I'm setting my sights on it.



Glass half-Full

Here come da sword to separate

When our rebellious 20th-century soul

slit its wrist with a broken existentialist bowl,

our severed spirit was cast out to wander

in a rational world cut a-sunder.



Then while the brotherhood of man

was striving to put us together again

along came the jihadi with sharpened sword

moving swift, like a terrorist horde,

calling for righteousness, the Muslimic version,

and it brought forth a jihadi incursion.



Now Western decadence and license is no defense,

even if our license permits us to sit on the fence,

against the marauding jihadi whose scimitar is red

with so much collateral blood being shed.



The Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword,

and while battalions of man-made righteousness move toward

a world that's torn up with terror and strife,

I'm still staking my claim on eternal life,

Christian version,

with a Spirit incursion.



That's my story and I'm stickin' to it;

'cause Jesus' resurrection is more convincing than anyone else can do it.

My faith will outlive any worldly disgrace

that could possibly o'ertake us as we run this race.



Glass half-Full

in the event of a World War. . .

First, the bad news:

World War I was the excruciating death-seizure of 19th-century imperialism.

World War II was an agonizing replay of WWI, with 20th-century ideologies replacing old-world imperialist dynasties.

World War III will be a torturous replay of the medieval Crusades, with 20th-century ideologies reverting to ancient religious hegemonies.

World War I was fought in trenched battlefields, mostly in Europe, by soldiers disciplined in classic military tactics.

World War II was fought in Europe, north Africa, and the Asian rim of the Pacific, which qualified the conflagration as an actual "World" war, in the global expanse of land, sea, and air. Combatants were highly-trained soldiers, organized in in mega-armies.

World War III will be incinerated by terrorists, against constitutional law 'n order governments. The Worldwide death-struggle will pit electronically-networked ad hoc jihadists against hyper-securitized anti-terrorist specialized military teams. The battlefields of World War III will be the cities of this world.

World War I was fought with rifles, artillery, primitive tanks and primitive airplanes.

World War II was fought with rifles, artillery, advanced airplanes, destroyer ships, intelligence, aircraft carriers and two H-bombs.

World War III will be fought with fatwas, improvised explosive devices, shocking media executions, surgical air-campaigns, automatic weapons, drones, weaponized missiles, suicide bombs, media-hyped propaganda misinformation, frenzied media-wars in which news companies are scooping each other for shock'n'awe digital imagery, cartoons, hyped-up hate speech, video-games converted to actual weaponry, torture, manipulated scarcities, manipulated bounties, false intelligence, hacking, digital hijacking, chemical weapons, dirty bombs, tactical nuclear weapons (or the threat of them) and the god of forces masquerading as religion (on both "sides").

World War I pitted European Central Powers against Entente Allies.

World War II pitted Nazi/Fascist Axis against Capitalist/Communist Allies.

World War III pits IslamoFascists against Everybody else in the World.

World War I was, until it ended.

World War II was, until it ended.

World War III is already here, and now.

World War I produced a lot of collateral damage.

World War II produced more collateral damage.

World War III will be all about collateral damage.

And we will all die in it, or in some time thereafter.

That's the bad news. The good news is:

there is life after death. Here's the big picture:

"The entire vision will be to you like the words of a sealed book, which when they give it to the one who is literate, saying, 'Please read this,' he will say, 'I cannot, for it is sealed.'

Then the book will be given to the one who is illiterate, saying, 'Please read this.' And he will say, 'I cannot read.' "

The best strategy for dealing with World War III is: learn to "read", and act accordingly. That way, you won't have to depend on cartoons for your intelligence.

Until next time. . .

Smoke

Time for Jihad?

Jihad is not one of the five pillars upon which the faith of Islam is founded.

If we, the Christians of this world, are to morally oppose Muslim terrorists, we should not do it on a platform of condemning Islam as a whole. Such a judgment upon Mohammed's people would be downright impracticable and unworkable. We may classify them as heretics; some of us may identify Mohammed as a false prophet.

But hey, the Muslims of the world are not going to go away on the basis of our opposing their extremist elements. In the last fourteen centuries millions of the Islamic faithful have followed the teachings of Mohammed, and millions of them still are following him through the Quran and hadith traditions.

And that is worth something, because it is reality. Islam represents a long-lived institutional presence in our world. Such longevity has earned the people of the Quran an historical legitimacy.

Mohammed founded his worldwide religion based on five religious disciplines, or "pillars," as the Muslims call them: belief in one God, prayer five times a day, giving to the poor, fasting and spiritual discipline during Ramadan, and the hajj journey to Mecca.

Jihad is not one of the five pillars of Islamic faith.

World history proves that Islam is no fly-by-night cult; the opinions of mankind render it a legitimate force to be reckoned with.

On one hand, the "force" characteristic of Islamic expansion is the problem, and we need to deal with it. If Islam is a religion of the sword, which depends on forced conversion of people with whom it crosses paths , we do have a large fundamental problem with it.

On the other hand, if the coercion we presently see from ISIS and other murderous groups is not rooted in authentic Islam itself but rather in extremists' distortion of that faith, we cannot reasonably classify all Muslims as jihadists.

So which is it? Which "hand" is it? I believe we need to give mainstream Muslims the benefit of the doubt, because we inhabit the same world they do. Blessed are the peacemakers. But the ISIS murderers--they are a different animal. They are the Nazis of our age.

We will soon have to deal with them in the same way our grandparents had to deal with the Nazis three quarters of a century ago. Because the world did not effectively oppose the rise of Hitler and his Nazi criminals in a timely way, their Third Reich thuggery corrupted the entire machinery of Germany's government and military. Then it took the greatest generation of our Western civilization to put a stop to their fiercely organized bloodletting. But it was not easy. Millions gave their lives in the process of ridding the world of the Nazi pestilence.

This cannot be allowed to happen to the Islamic countries in our day and time. We must make peace with Islam, if that is possible. Blessed are the peacemakers.

Accordingly, we must insist that Muslim leaders clean house, and rid their ranks of those murderers who execute innocent men/women without rule of law and without justice.

This dire situation is nothing new. About ninety years ago, Adolf Hitler named his contention with the world "Mein Kamph," which means "my struggle." He spent the rest of his destructively misguided life trying to convince the German people that "his" struggle was the same as their struggle to become a great people. It wasn't. As it later turned out, the German people had better things to do than fight the feuhrer's maniacal battles for him. What a price the Germans and the world at large had to pay in time and precious lives, to learn that hard lesson.

Likewise, the Muslim faithful of our present world have better things to do--like governing their own people--than fighting the bloody battles laid out for them by ISIS, Al Nusra, Hamas, Hezbollah and others of their ilk.

Fourteen hundred years ago, Mohammed established his legacy among the Arabs by accepting the role of spiritual prophet. But he went further than that. He also took on political and military roles. Perhaps his taking on such forceful responsibilities, and their subsequent precedents after his death, is why the coercive power of the sword has become an oft-used weapon of Muslim hegemony.

This swordish attribute of Islamic power is not a religious tactic to which Christians readily acknowledge legitimacy. Except that: our own history of violence, forced persecution and war are, like it or not, an undeniable stain on the Christian heritage.

Even so, that was not Jesus' precedent. All the subsequent killing, maiming, forced converting in the name of God under Christendom was what we did, not Jesus. Jesus' ultimate purpose was to atone for those sins that infect every one of us, and to affirm his salvatory work through resurrection after crucifixion. There is no historical evidence that Jesus took up the sword.

As for Mohammed, he affirmed his work through writing the Quran, but also by taking up the sword in the interests of redistributing wealth and establishing justice among his Arab people. He did take up the lethal weapon of military power in order to accomplish that. The principles of Islam governance are human principles.

The principles of Christian resurrection, however, are advocated by a people who hope to transcend this world, and possibly transform it in the process. Because this world is at war with itself, always will be . . . until Christ returns.

You think me naive to write such a thing? Two thousand years of Christianity attest that I am not alone in this belief. As for you followers of Mohammed, may Allah be with you. We'll see how far that gets you on judgment day.

Smoke

Dover Breach

The air is mad tonight
electric with fright
but drugged with fluff and flight:
hear no evil, see no blight.
America in cyber slumber swoons
while England grooms jihad goons
like 1937 fascist blackshirts
deflowering 2014 democratic skirts.
France ( peace be upon her)
seethes with same old same old stir--
that angst witch discontent doth incur
from yonder barricaded former age
now slit with new jihadi rage.

The air of Faith
so thin of late
as most prefer to flirt with fate
now cringes in this new birth of hate;
its melancholy, long withdrawing gasp
retreating fast, like slithering asp
unable now to grasp
with slipping grips unfurled
the naked idols the world.

Ah, good Christian, let us be true
to one another! for the world, which casts its spell
of rebel chaos and decadent hell,
has no power when all's said and done
to set our ancient faith upon the run,
though the infernal note of madness floods every byte
while polar extremists clash by night.

(This poem's form was adapted from Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach.)

Smoke

Deliver us from evil

We read about it in a book:

La guillotine Revolution;

how it fell so quick,

and king's blood splattered Paris stones.

Anarchy was loosed upon the world.



Then we read about it in the news:

that hammer/sickle Revolution,

heavy like a brick

when czar's blood splattered Russian stones.

Anarchy was hurled upon the world.



Then we heard it on the radio:

blitzkrieg of rabid Evolution,

emblazoned in that weird swastik

when innocent blood splattered kristallnacht stones.

Anarchy goose-stepped upon the world.



We even saw it on TV

that same forever-spreading evolutionary Revolution,

manifesting every slick human trick

while tactical blood splattered o'er strategic zones.

Anarchy was broadcast upon the world.



Now we encounter it in the 'net,

that old new Revoluti scimitari;

it slits across us quick,

while new astonished blood spills on ancient stones.

Jihadi anarchy is hurled upon the world.



Let this be a warning to yah.

Prepare to meet our Maker Jah,

whose sacrificial blood spilt on Jerusalem brick

while atonement shone bright and thick.

Then a banner of Deliverance was unfurled;

now Mercy is hurled upon the Revolutionary world,

if ye will have it.

Selah.



Smoke

Left Right might fight

Right will fight,
while Left is deft
with dialectic theory;
But Left is bereft
of any reasonable query
when theoretical might
turns to gulag fright.
 
Left is cleft,
when Right makes Might
with military surging;
but Right is quite
insensitive to diplomatic urging
when armed might
explodes in war-torn blight.
 
Fascist pigs will fly
when Communist hogs do die;
Lefty cadres then wail
as Right-wing gangs prevail.
But Fascist hogs do die
when Commie pigs espy 
Right-wingers as they fail.
Collateral damages turn pale as hail.  
 
Meanwhile back at the tranche:
 
Jihadi cells collaborate
while Western minds elaborate
on Left, on Right, what's wrong, what's right,
and what will happen with the terror'd fright
when keffiyah'd thugs find Might:
Probably a fight.

Smoke