12/25/05
A year ago we found ourselves even more astonished by the absolute ignorance by which
a voting majority in this country had again so gullibly followed the judas-goats of manipulation up the mountain. Blinded
by the deceptive and shallow lies of the burning Bush they once again took the country on over the
cliff.
Last year at Christmas time, still in shock at the moral shallowness so proudly and blatantly
put on display, we put up no tree, no lights and treated the holiday as a reason for mourning. Family members from Utah -
ignoble possessor of the title of "reddest of the red states" - had told us prior to voting that they would never vote for
a nother democrat and that all we had to do was read Bush's spiritual biography and we'd see the light of how humble and pious
GW truly was.
... that voting against Bush was the traitorous act of political liberals on their way to
hell.
It was our own mistaken naivety that assumed a wider range of adult political
wisdom -free from the taint of mythical religious realities - and found that such adult political wisdom was vastly superceded
by religious wishful thinking and outright spiritual deception.
A year later, we are celebrating a sober Christmas, but again with a tree, lights,
a fine dinner, phone calls and holiday greetings to friends and loved ones ...
... and most of all a quiet contemplation of our lives together as responsible adults
moving toward retirement at a time when the next generation still hears and follows the judas goats.
But there is holiday hope, fueled by "nothing-new-to-say" political speeches and demagoguery that
have little diverting impact on the ongoing revelations of criminality and duplicity of those who have governed by lies.
They lie because they have no new message, no new insight, and an emberrasing tendency
to go back to the well too many times.
There is not and never was a war on Christmas.
But there has been and is a war on the religion of Jesus.
There is not and were not legitimate reasons to establish a permanent state of war and unrest
in the Middle East driven by conservative and neocon think-tank foolishness.
This is opening the way for intellectual and common-sense grown-ups to move in and start cleaning
up the mess; setting the house in order, and putting the spendthrift pseudo economic geniuses out to pasture where all
they can do is stand around and pretend to smart thoughts.
There was no immediate economic crisis that required a total fracturing of our national economy
and the false intellectual rationale that has so many future generations debt-bound. We allowed the stupid
to chang the way we do business in the name of some kind of corporate self-serving wisdom that continues to lie about what
is best for the American poor and middle class.
So Christmas is celebrated in our house today - but it remains a sober time. The spirit
of hope offered by the birth of someone divine and sent from God to straighten things out, is the spirit of hope for
the birth of wisdom and courage in a slumbering citizenry - a wisdom and courage that can drive a nation back into
the real world.
Like the mythical stories now 2000 years old, we see the signs.
More and more stars illuminate the intelligence of American Citizens who, like shephers in
fields, are coming to recognize what the lights are revealing and the marvelous miracle that lies over the hill if they will
but take steps in that direciton.
Real wise men are beginning to speak and bring more useful gifts, and helping us avoid
lying tyrants intent on killing any who threaten them.
It is a time of hope.
It must be a time of hope.
The terrible change and drift toward the building of an American Talibanic State lies
in duping faithful American Christians who seem to have forgotten that Christianity is not dominated by imperial designs
on wealth and power ...
... or the notion that killing in the name of Jesus is the spiritual contract contained
in any born-again moment between God and humanity.
2006 holds the hope of Revelations - revealed knowledge, the truth of which awakens slumbering
Christian shepherds - and sheep - and draws them away from the terrible precipice at their feet.
© Arthur Ruger 2005