#my father is like a capable cook for a male boomer but he is not a creative one and modern problems require modern solutions

[starstuffandalotofcoffee]

Finally made Rick Martinez's fried red tomatoes; unfortunately this was not a peak flavor tomato but also I think you need the firmer and more acidic green tomato to really stand up to the frying

That said, if you take a vegetable, roll it in seasoned flour, and bread it in panko and fry it, it is unlikely to be bad. The problem is also I have now eaten a large breaded tomato, with a mayonnaise-based dip, so I'm like well this is a dinner I guess.

Also it's "use up all your veggies before you go away for Thansgiving" weekend so I'm now deciding if I want to make aloo gobi tomorrow or something else.

I also volunteered to make a gluten-free cornbread stuffing with mushrooms*, so I'm deciding if I also want to have poblanos in it or if that will be too many competing flavors.

*regular stuffing is mushroom free due to picky eater in the family; my brother is gluten-intolerant and likes mushrooms. I proposed this as a way to kill two birds with one stone.

[petrapinesap-blog]

Why Do Trump Supporters Refuse to Repent?

I have been on a quest to find out why Trump supporters act the way they do. Why are they like that? I have sought the answer everywhere. I ask everyone that question. Still, it baffles me. WHY do they reject the truth and cling to ridiculous lies? Often, we think that if we just tell them the truth they will see it and be enlightened. All it will take is for someone to educate them. But sadly, all of us who have tried to do this have found that it does NOT work with the hardcore Trump supporter. Though, I still think we should keep posting the truth, because you never know who might read it and actually learn something or at least have a seed planted. And I want to be known as someone who DID try to speak the truth. One day, that will mean something. Now, however, it seems that we are being attacked just for speaking the truth.

I feel like one of those people who go on a Spiritual quest to seek the guru on the mountaintop. Why? Why? Why? I ask it of everyone. One theory that seems plausible is that these hardcore supporters are far down on Maslow's heirarchy of Needs, (remember that from Psychology and Sociology class?) 

But yesterday, I felt like bashing my head against the wall over comments I read. WHY WHY WHY kept echoing through my mind. An answer came to my mind. I am sure it wasn't through my own wisdom, but because of so much prayer on the subject that God allowed me to see something.

Trump Supporters believe in lies and misconceptions not because they don't KNOW the truth but because they don't WANT to know the truth. They are willingly accepting lies instead of facts because this is what they choose to believe. They do hear the truth, they just choose to NOT hear it. When we patiently go over and over the errors of their ways they spout nonsense conspiracy theories to us. They insult us and poke fun at libruls and demoncrats over and over. And then congratulate themselves over their witty barbs. They are so busy sticking their fingers in their ears and going "nanananana" that they CAN'T hear the truth. All of this posturing and hate is just a wall so that they don't have to listen to the truth. If they calmed down and acted like normal people then they would have no defenses and the truth would hit them in the face and likely knock them down. And they can't have that.

And why don't these people want to hear the truth? The Bible says the Truth will set you free. So why do they not want to know it? Because they don't want to be set free!!!! They are choosing to believe lies because they WANT to believe lies. They are in bondage in one way or another. I have come to believe that a great many vehement Trump supporters, especially white males of the baby boomer generation are severely damaged people who carry undiagnosed hurts around with them. They have learned to push away any type of introspection and self analysis. They willingly believe the craziest conspiracy theories rather than listen to the truth.

I believe that many of these people had abusive parents by today's standards, their fathers in particular. I am basing my opinions on things I’ve read and by recalling comments made by some of them.   Fathers in those years were often less involved in child rearing and when they became involved it was to punish. The generation that reveres Trump the most seems to be the Baby Boomer generation, the babies born after men came home from war. Many of those new fathers were suffering from PTSD but nobody even called it that then, much less paid attention to it. Many of them just didn't have the emotional capability of being a loving father in the way that their children needed. Most remember their fathers just never talking about their war years. That was the way they handled the horrors of it by sealing it away and never talking about it. Today we know that this is harmful but back then, this was the only way to handle things. The baby boomer children grew up believing that this was the way to deal with difficult emotions. Just shove them aside and never think about them.

Another problem with the Baby Boomer's fathers was that many of this generation tended to be authoritarian. Very authoritarian. Some, even to the point of cruelty. I recall a pastor of mine talking about the harsh discipline of his father. But rather than denounce it, he praised it and talked about how fathers these days were too soft. But the harsh discipline of his father colored this pastor's entire perception of God, and so influenced every word that came from his pulpit. But he himself was unable to see that damage had been inflicted upon him when he was a small child, damage that was still with him and would always be with him because he would not examine such feelings and chose instead to shut them away. Instead he adopted the same beliefs as his abusive father and became just like him, though less harsh since society began to frown upon such extreme discipline. But the underlying attitudes were still there and he continued to inflict them from the pulpit and upon his own children.

I've heard baby boomers talk about how they weren't allowed to get away with acting the way the younger generation acts now. And they say it proudly. They believe this because they cannot step back to question some of the discipline they received. They must continue to hold onto their perception of themselves and of the world. They have become their abusers and so cannot question. They choose to push away the truth and will not look at it because it threatens them. Making fun of snowflakes and libtards is necessary to them to keep them from hearing their own hurt inner child who is still crying. They must drown out those cries because they don't want to think about them. I imagine that a child raised by an authoritarian father who disciplined harshly was told not to cry, to suck it up, to not feel his pain, not to express it in anyway. They learned that it would only result in harsher discipline. So these people learned to suppress it. Anytime something reminds their subconscious selves of this, they must attack and get rid of it and make it shut up.

Another thing Trump supporters do is to hate and make fun of people who need help. Because of their long ago damage they cannot stand any type of weakness in themselves. It was beat out of them, so to speak. They were taught to hate weakness and so despise it in others and blame others for their problems. This is the generation that was taught to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They didn't get compassion and so they do not believe any one else deserves it either. It is much easier for them to blame these people and believe they don’t deserve help. In this way, they join in with their abusers and become like them. This is how they coped with such damage at an early age: they became bullies. To show any sort of compassion to people they view as "lesser" would cause them to have to let go of their belief system. They would much rather hold on to hateful feelings directed towards other people than have to be confronted with their own feelings.  They do not want to see the “lesser” as people because that would take away their status as being “greater”. 

And so what about these people's mothers? I am thinking about the 1950's stereotypical mother wearing pearls while vacuuming the carpet. She always had dinner cooked and her home was always clean when her husband came home. Keeping a clean house was probably one of the most important virtues she could demonstrate.  Well behaved, clean children was another expectation.  Anything that would reflect badly on her must be covered up and hidden from the world.  She communicated to her children that the father always came first. The children lived their lives believing in pleasing the father, the man of the house. He was special, to be revered whether he was worthy or not. And these mothers also may have felt trapped or thwarted because they were not able to have a career or life of their own outside of their role as mothers and wives. This resentment could have been subtly communicated to their children as well.  

I also consider that the Baby Boomers were a prosperous generation. Parents had a tendency to spoil their children with material possessions and there was a lot of emphasis on keeping up with the neighbors. What you had was very important. Also important were the social norms of the day. There were so many more rules and socially enforced norms than in today's society. Appearances and looking good were values that were taught and the children learned this was much more important than actually BEING good people and internalizing Christian values. Being successful and looking successful was the goal of life. To hear the truth now, that first will be last and last will be first, and that God wants us to not be concerned with ourselves but with others, is something none of these people want to hear. So any little thing that would put a question mark into any of these values that they established is not welcomed and they must put up defenses against hearing truth. They don't want to know that the values they were taught are not Christian values at all.

And another thing. People of this generation were taught from early on that Love of Country was right up there next to Love of God. They pledged to the flag and then prayed to God all in the same time frame (before prayer was taken out of schools.) Children raised in the time period after Madalyn Murray O'Hair didn't learn to equate the two in school as did children growing up in the 50′s and early 60′s.  So in my opinion prayer in schools wasn't a good thing! The Christianity that these people learned was infiltrated with love of country and being American. Prosperous, strong, the best.  They grew up with a distorted and glorified view of America and believed God favored America.  

In fact, Jesus said that a person cannot follow after him unless he hates his father and mother. Jesus didn't mean to literally hate fathers and mothers, what he meant was that a person's heritage must come second. If you follow after Jesus, you are a Christian first before you are an American. If the values that Jesus taught come into conflict with the laws and values of America, then you must follow Jesus’ teachings first.  The Baby Boomer generation has a hard time grasping this fact. They were raised with pictures of a blue eyed Jesus and flags draped on the cross. Somehow Christianity became distorted to fit with the idea of defending one's country against others. Killing enemies became Godly.

This is MY opinion of why Trump supporters don't listen to the truth. THEY DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH. They don't want to be set free. Much easier for them to continue in their bondage and worldly views. They don't want to have any type of repentance and turn to new (to them) ideas of Christianity instead of the worldly ideas instilled upon them as children. Repentance in the original language doesn't mean sorry as we are often told. Repentance means adopting an entire new way of thinking; an entire new way of seeing the world and what is valued by the world in contrast to what is valued by God. Sadly, these people, many of them who profess to be Christians have never repented and do not want to repent. They do not want to know the truth.  They cling to their world view because self introspection is intolerable and because they enjoy their status. 

So what is to be done about these people who cling to their horrible world views and refuse to listen to truth? I don't know. God says to pray for them. God says to love them.  We need to remember that God ALWAYS loves them. He doesn’t see them as worthless sinners who just can’t understand the truth, he sees them as people who just haven’t gotten there yet. He knows their backgrounds, he knows their obstacles.  We need to  keep on telling them the truth, lovingly, even if we get attacked for it. We need to pray for America's eyes to be opened and truth to be revealed. And if we pray this, we have to also pray for ourselves. If there is anything standing in our way of seeing truth, we have to pray that it is revealed also. If we have errors in the way we believe, we need to repent also and be willing to change our minds too.