#transformingamerica

[ramrodd]

COMMENTARY:

Dennis Prager and the National Review: two pillars of white male privilege, the Britt Kavanaugh demographic in journalism.

[elitecentric-blog]

After work dinners and I will say I am beyond honored to be in the same room with the #blacklivesmatter founders @osope and @aliciagarza We must value ourselves and value one another to stick together as a community to make a real change ✊ #demos15 #gala #transformingAmerica #makingchange #makingmoves #nyc #fightingforchange #blessed #elitecentric #activist #organizer #communitybuilding #blacklivesmatter #founders #nofilter (at Capitale NY)

[ramrodd]

COMMENTARY:

The problem, Junior, is that you are on the same side of the fence with me.

It's like being in the same room with a rabid skunk: I might be able to avoid getting bit, but you still stink.

[ramrodd]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkCzRLnibTo)

COMMENTARY:

ZAMM  is epistemological in nature. I identify totally with Phaedrus, who is probably an ISTP/SP. I am an ESTP/SP. The Myers-Briggs Type Inventory/Keirsey Temperament is a direct result of Kant’s Categorical Imperative by way of Karl Jung and reflects the cognitive organization of the individual psyche relative the processing of data in the creation of information. SP’s are organized existentially while SJ/NF/NT’s are organized by internal values.

The American academe has an intellectual bias for the SJ/NF/NT majority to the disadvantage of the SP. There are less than 3% of the people in higher education who are SP natives. This is the source of the issue of Phaesrus at the University of Chicago, the inherent Fascism of the Great Books premise. At the back of the book are two diagrams, the big one represents the epistemology of the SF/NF/NT majority and the smaller one the epistemology of the SP (and, for what ever it is worth, Kant. Just for the record, Reason and Thinking are equivalent functions and Passion and Feeling, likewise).

In 1968, the year a couple of you were born, I was an ROTC cadet at Indiana University. One of my classmates was one of the big swinging dicks of the SDS and was voted Student Body President our senior year (1969). He and I got along just fine. I went to Vietnam. The thing is that the Army is Hegelian in aspect and the epistemology of the Army Ranger School, which I completed and was an instructor in the department, is based on the smaller diagram at the back of ZAMM. Combat is a very existential sort of enterprise and, in terms of training, the SP cognitive organization is the universal denominator. The alienation of combat veterans, as measured by suicide, homelessness and PTSD, is the result of leaving the epistemology of Phaedrus and trying to adjust to the Fascism of the dominant SJ/NF/NT coalition.

It is not insignificant that the Chautaugquas, the method of his inquiry into values, is an Aristotilean dichotomy, the tensions between the Classic frame of reference and the Romantic frame of reference.  Aristotle was at the core of the intellectual evil Phaedrus tracked to its lair in the classroom with the table with the crack.

You are familiar with the Parable of the Cave. Consider the Academe as being the cave, with the NTs and NFs chained into their chairs, debating the meaning of the shadows being cast on the wall in front of them from the clay figures being passed in front of the fire by the SJs. And if one breaks free and works his or her way to the mouth of the Cave and his eyes adjust to the blinding sunlight, he or she will find the SPs playing Coed Naked Volley Ball in the sand by the sea shore.

Phaedrus went crazy trying to outflank the whole of western education. Kurt Lewin, a combat veteran from WWI, attempted a similar flanking movement against the Aristotelian traditions of  Cornell with The Dynamics of the Personality. He describes the source of this same alienation of epistemology in Kriegslandschaft.

As I say, I identify totally with Phaedrus. I wouldn’t have missed Vietnam for the world, but coming home has been a bitch. When I get there. I’ll tell you. 

[ramrodd]

As a conservative, I can appreciate that Trump can be a jerk at times. However, can the liberals give us just one policy of his they think is harmful to America?

COMMENTARY:

Everything Trump and the crypto-Nazi coalition running the GOP are doing is destroying everything I went to Vietnam to defend and their lust to finance tax subsidies to the Koch brothers, as a proxy for the GOP’s patrons. by eliminating programs to the most productive sector of the economy in terms of new wealth creation as a factor of tax payer’s dollar, exposes the GOP’s agenda to transfer wealth from the American middle class to the people providing crypto-Nazi politicians the big bucks they need to stay in office.

What’s not to like, eh?

UPDATE:

Forbes has published a chart of Trump’s net worth by President. It shows that his net worth declined under Bush the Elder from 1987 to 1995, which was a direct result of Bob Dole’s 1986 Tax Reform, which caused the bottom to fall out of the real estate markets.

Trump’s 2017 Tax Reform is based on Bob Dole’s 1986 Tax Reform, when Reaganomics became the law of the land.

Everything these people touch turns to shit.

[ramrodd]

Top 10 CRAZIEST inventions of the Roman Army!!

COMMENTARY:

Let's say you were a senior centurion, roughly the equivalent of a Sergeant Major/Chief Warrant Officer, in Caesarea when Tiberius was Emperor and Pontius Pilate was your boss. You were a hereditary member of the Praetorian Guard, aka "The Italian Cohort", because you were a natural born Italian. You were at the climax phase of your career, but you could stay on the payroll the rest of your life without doing much more but keep busy in a centurion kind of way.

You had come to Palestine with Pilate, who. like Julius Caesar, was on an executive track in the Praetorian Guard. You had enlisted in the Italian Cohort, like Fergal O'Hanlon, you wandered away to take your own part in the Patriot's Game, though you joined the occupying force of the world and spent a great deal of time spying on the rebels in town. And crucifying them when you knew what you needed to know and you caught.

One of the things that kept you busy was running Pilate's intelligence services. Your actual boss, in many ways, was the spy master of the Praetorian Guard, Theophilus, back in Rome. Theophilus reported to the Praetorian Perfect, Sejanus, and was part of the functions Sejanus installed in the Praetorian Guard as part of his plot to become Emperor at Tiberius's expense. but, at the time you were in Palestine, you were busy implementing those same reforms at the various regional headquarters all over the world. You were the leading edge of what would become the Army General Staff in the American Pentagon and what ever ambition Sejanus may have had was above your pay grade and, as it turns out, above Pilate's pay grade.

About five years into Pilate's tenure (you will retire in Caesarea and maintain a little summer villa in Sopphoris, which combined the delights of the Galilee without all the Jewish stuff cluttering up the market place and la dolce vita of the region), a couple of things happen at the same time: you begin to surveille a Jewish holy man associated with another agitator called by the soldiers and spies "The Dunker" for doing some Jewish mumbo-jumbo down by the river and half-drowning his recruits to get in to his gang and Sejanus dragged out of the Senate and executed by decimation as an enemy of Tiberius.

This Jew, who your spies identified as Jesus of Nazarus, a little hamlet just down the road from Sopphuris, was the real thing. You didn't know what that real thing was, but He was about His Duty in the same way you are and, the longer you watched Him, the less dangerous He appeared (he could put a legion of fit young men the field, organize them and feed them in the blink of an eye, but the only thing He seemed to want to do was to entertain them and give them a good meal.

And, oh yes, heal people. Your own houseboy had become sick with some wretched local contagion and, on the advice of one of your Jewish intelligence assets, the leader of a Jewish community center you were financing as a listening post, suggested you ask this guy to do his magic and get your boy back on his feet. You owned him, the boy, but you loved him as your own son and would free him at his majority. So you did and, lo and behold, this Jesus told you your love for the boy healed him and that you were first among equals among the saints of the Jews. You don't know what THAT means, but is has something to do with being a faithful servant to Tiberius and a leader of your own servants. This Jesus was not afraid of you, nor angry, but pleased to meet you. It's like He had found something in a Roman soldier He couldn't find among his own people.

That was two years ago and you kept Him in the corner of your eye while you busied your self with stringing out your intelligence network out along the trade routes running across the land bridge into Africa from Europe and Asia.  Your encounter with this Jewish faith healer has quckened your interest in the Jewish religion and your listening post allowed you to indulge this fascination with their legends and traditions and apparently God-given need to argue over stories out of the great scrolls they trotted out on their idle day.  You knew their God, this Yaweh: you had heard Her ululations over the frenzy of battle, urging you forward "Follow ME! Follow ME!" and, onward, Roman soldier, you went. There was a great deal of their lives you couldn't share or witness because, well, you had to hack off part of your dick for full membership and you were perfectly content to keep it at the level of a hobby. You like building things and you hear gossip that helps you connect the dots with the material coming in from your spies. All in all, this Jesus was something of a Will O' the Wisp, not because He was concerned about Rome but from getting stabbed in the back by religious rivals. These Jews argue about everything.

And the fallout from the Sejanus purge added the personal interest of Tiberius in everything Sejanus touched, especially the executive side of the Praetorian Guard. Tiberius wasn't concerned by the reforms, in fact , endorsed them, but there were issues of loyalty that needed to be sorted out and Pilate had received a number of directives on dealing with the Jewish authorities that somewhat blunted your own effectiveness. Sometimes, it was useful to hack up a couple hundred locals just to make sure they are paying attention. Especially in Jerusalem, where arguing was the stock in trade of their fabulus temple, something Agustus would have erected in Rome. They were touchy about everything to do with Rome all the crosses in the world couldn't discourage and Tiberius ordered Pilate to accept it.

So, when this Jesus shows up on the doorsteps of the Pratorium in Jerusalem with a Jewish lynch mob demanding a lynching from Pilate, Pilate had his marching orders to kiss the Jews' ass and do what they wanted. You had never really briefed Pilate on Jesus because he wasn't a problem and Pilate had nothing but contempt for their religion. I mean, what god expects you to remain idle one day out of 7 ?  It was enough that they had a special legal arrangement to pray for the Emperor without sacrificing to him. Having to do their wet work for them with this harmless religious entertainer was the final insult. Pilate had the last laugh when he crowned this hapless man "King of the Jews"! Those Jews did back flips and chewed their scraggly beards in rage, but complaining to the Emperor that Pilate had fulfilled their request wasn't possible.

So, you hung this guy out to dry and Pilate was able to get another little jab at the Jews by letting friends of Jesus bury Him properly instead of leaving Him for the dogs or to rot on the tree. The Jews wouldn't leave it alone, though, and demanded Pilate post soldiers to keep the friends of Jesus from stealing His body and making trouble. So, you did and figured that would be the end of it,

But the next morning, when the soldiers came back from guarding the tomb, they had an incredible story about this Jesus coming back alive and escaping with the help of angels. Sixteen soldiers and the centurion in charge all had exactly same story about this Jesus getting away. Everything they said was incredible, but a lot of strange stuff happened around this Jesus and your first thought was to cover everybodies' ass if the question of someone walking away from a crucifixion and falling asleep while on duty came up.

You sent them to the Jews in charge of the lynch mob and explain what had happened. This was their mess and they needed to protect your men by protecting their own political interests, That worked out better than you expected, when the Jews gave them a healthy chunk of change to support the official Temple version that Jesus' followers had stolen the body.

The next thing you did was to take the story to Pilate and to prepare a report to Rome explaining what had happened and what background you had and let Tiberius know this was going on, which you sent up the chain of command to Theophilus. Another difference after Sejanus' execution was that Tiberius got the report, which he took to the Senate.

The way you know that Tiberius got the report is because everyone in Rome began to call the people who were followers of this Jesus "Christians", who had already begun to show up in Rome by the time Tiberius addressed the Senate. Your report gave Tiberius the word and Tiberius gave it to Rome.

As an invention of Roman soldiers, "Christian" would come to define the empire. Now, that's some CRAZY!

[ramrodd]

HEIST: Who Stole the American Dream [FULL FILM]

COMMENTARY:

Hedrick Smith's "Who Stole The American Dream" traces what became the Conservative Supply-Side Agenda from 1971.

[ramrodd]

COMMENTARY:

+Burnt Toast 

That's some pretty torturous logic such as it is. 

 As you point out, the original Green meaning of "atheist" is "without god(s)"  You demanded my definition of "atheist" and, based on my experience with Soviets, that fits perfectly. Unlike you, they had no active belief system, one way or another about The One. The were without god(s). A- theists. 

Now, I can expand the definition, based on this experience, to stipulate that atheists have no moral investment in non-material agency. That definitely fits the Soviets. You, on the other hand, and other similar anti-theist, have an enormous emotional investment, which anchors your belief system in nothing, in your own moral agency.  In addition you seek out opportunities, such as this dialogue, to assert the moral superioriority of your belief system by attempting to bludgeon compliance with the emptiness of your belief system and to enlarge the community of individuals who share your embrace of nothing, 

 I admit that the sets of atheists and anti-theists are not mutually exclusive. It’s just that the Soviets were atheists and they weren't in any way militant evangelicals in the irrational manner you are. 

 >>>>Explain how your uncreated god is not a nihilist<<< 

 Well, among other things, the universe continues to expand. 

Explain electricity. We have learned to harness it usefully using Reason/logic (Reason is really a very archiac term: cognitive sciences have moved far beyond it's sentimental boundaries) but why electricity is is beyond logic. As Thomas Edison said, electricity is: use it. 

And that's my attitude about The One and the Holy Spirit. I have been led by the Holy Spirit into this forum as part of my inquiry into the identity of the author of the Gospel of Mark, who is clearly Cornelius, the centurion in Acts 10.  In the Old Testament of the 66 books of the Protestant Bible, there are 5 people with whom God established a covenant partnership: Noah, Abraham, Joseph, the people of Israel, and David.  Cornelius is the 6th person, as the gateway to the Gentiles of the rest of the world, with whom The One established a covenant partnership, the Gospel of Mark being an early manifestation of that covenant partnership, which exploded through the Roman Empire and continues to expand to this day. 

As a direct result, I have had a working relationship with the Holy Spirit since 1990 and I have know The One since 1954.  This is infinitely preferable to dealing directly with The One: if you read the discriptions of Mohammad's encounters with Gabriel, they were extremely unpleasant for him. It's why the Quakers call themselves Quakers: because they quake in the presence of The One. I know exactly what they mean. 

 >>>>Finally, exposing bad arguments and reasoning also benefits people not participating in the argument.<<<< 

 I agree completely. That's why I persist in spite of your sneers and sophistry and, well, belief in nothing. There are those who will benefit.

[ramrodd]

COMMENTARY:

+Burnt Toast 

 >>>>>I find it fascinating that on some level you recognize that is what drives your belief, though.  I just want the truth, regardless of how appealing or unappealing it is<<<< 

 And the truth is that I cannot not know what I know,  God is. I know God. It's not a driver. It is. 

 >>>>Your statement about recognizing Yaweh when you put yourself in harms way in the line of duty is exactly that.  If you say you do X, you will experience Y, you are making a statement about the experiences of anyone who has done X.  Can you not follow the logic here?<<<<<  

I'll give you another experience: get a thermometer and take your temperature. If it registers 98.6 or so, God is with you. God is life. It is a simple and necessary logic. 

But it isn't sufficient to anyone to come to know God. The purpose of the Bible is to guide individuals into that experience and to validate it when it occurs in the individual consciousness. Why Cornelius came to realize he shared an epistemology and ontology with Jesus was a result of his military service and his relationship to Duty/authority. He didn't put it in those terms, but he acted on that basis and Jesus validates what Paul would later call his justification by faith on exactly the same basis God validates Abraham's righteousness in Genesis 15:6: because he believed in and acknowledged what he was experiencing, 

 >>>>"I don't care if people are atheists, I don't understand it....  You are not an atheist."<<<< 

 I don't care if people are atheists. It doesn't rub off. I don't understand it because, as I say, there is a universal, and necessary, existential requirement for the relationship. If your temperature registers zero, you are Count Dracula. Or something you aren't. 

 What I really don't understand is that my experience of The One is not a majority feature of the American Evangelical community and Christians, in general. especially among men. 

I have lately come to realize that women encounter Yaweh during childbirth for the same reasons She abides for soldiers in combat as I've described variously, above. It's a new idea for me, but it begins to explain the larger context of Jesus' ministry in the Jewish community and Moses' design to suppress it. Women don't need an explanation for the same reason I don't: they know God. Men have to be led into it, which, as I say, is the purpose of the Bible. 

 Now, my reason for posting on this video site is because I am offended by the subordination of literature to the post-Hegilian historical deconstruction Carrier puts forward as revealed Truth. Literature is the superior expression and history a subordinate narrative element. Literature contains history as an element of the fullness of the culture it reflects. Reversing that relationship is intellectually offensive to me. 

 In particular, Carrier's assertions regarding Acts and the Gospels as myth is a belief system based on fallacy and, in his case, systematic fraud little different from a Liberty University faith healer in its mercenary intent. 

I am interested in the actual origins of the Gospel of Mark within its actual historic context. Why did it happen? Because something totally unanticiptated in the actual experience of that generation happened, the resurrection, and, as luck would have it, they had the resources and professional inclination to accumulate data before the fact and the same professional inclination after the fact, to assemble this data into a coherent, and formal, narrative that supported a social dynamic that jumped the cultural boundaries of its origins and eventunally defined an empire. 

 And my musings on this issue in this forum irritates militant anti-theists, such as yourself, who proceed, as you do, to vigorously defend your faith in nothing with the expectation of convincing me to discard my access to the infinite for your puny constructs and the boundaries of finite logic.  This thread is a fringe benefit of my inquiries, but I don't harbor any ambitions of stemming whatever tide of disbelief you believe you represent. 

 As I say, even Jesus couldn't perform miracles when a mind was closed against Him. 

[ramrodd]

Why didn't General Kelly bring order to the White House as Chief of Staff as many predicted? Now it's reported that he and the President aren't even speaking.

Kelly is the reason why John Bolton, as Mr. Inside for the White House Resistence, has NOT been able to start a war for the GOP Deep State.

COMMENTARY:

Because Trump prefers the way John Bolton and Mike Pompeo kiss his ass.

Kelly didn’t get to where he is without developing state-of-the-art brown nosing skills, but he never substituted those skills for integrity.

The people who want Kelly gone are part of the “Resistance’ that identified itself in the NYTimes and, it appears to me, in coordination with Bob Woodward’s “Fear”.

In this regards, it should be evident that Paul Manafort’s task in Trump’s campaign was to install Mike Pence a pistol shot away from the Oval Office, just like LBJ, for the friends of the Russian enemies of Putin associated with the Dark Money of the GOP Deep State.

John Bolton is Mr. Inside for this cabal and Kelly’s role has been to thwart, as best he can, this agenda as it diverges from the critical path of America’s (and Trump’s) best interests. Mira Ricardel was fired by the First Lady for sabotaging the Be Best diplomacy under orders from Bolton. Like in 2001, Bolton came to the administration to start a war and Kelly has stymied that effort.

Which is why the White House Resistance, and the GOP Deep State, want Kelly gone.

[ramrodd]

Want to sound like a leader? Start by saying your name right | Laura Sic...

COMMENTARY:

If you take the time to earn an ROTC commission, you not only get 4 years of practical training in all this shit, you get to use it in combat if you're really lucky and smart enough to seize the opportunity.  

Of course, when you leave the military and bring all this training to the civilian community, trying to fit into corporate cultures where everybody has learned their leadership skills from TED Talks can make you suicidal and homeless. 

Or a crypto-Nazi like Jeff Bezos or Trump. There isn't much middle ground in the American corporate culture dominated by executives with Harvard MBAs and other priorities than military service. 

The Gospel of Mark was the essential model of servant-leadership at West Point and VMI before Vietnam. MacNamara infected the Duty, Honor, Country culture of George Marshal with the Harvard Business School MBA ethos and now, the ethos of Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump are important structures in the career planning of military officers after leaving the service. 

And people get famous teaching leadership as a TED Talk.

[ramrodd]

The attack — the latest in the president's ever-expanding PR offensive against Mueller's probe — echoes Trump's 2016 claim that the election results could be rigged against him

COMMENTARY:

Putin has to pull the trigger on Russian law enforcement targets in the Russian Dark Web by Bastille Day, These targets will light up the GOP Deep State in a way Mueller has never been able to see in the past around issues of money laundering and Citizens United.

That will have a huge impact on the mid-terms and the for-profit prisons for former House Freedom Caucus members and other people associated with Roger Stone, Steve Bannon and Eric Prince.

Trump's actual collusion with Putin will also be revealed, the irony being that it will remove most of Trump's business activities from the exposure to RICO.

[ramrodd]

Encounter With the Centurion, Bill Liversidge

COMMENTARY:

The centurion in Matthew 8 and Luke 7 is Cornelius, the centurion featured in Acts 10. Cornelius is probably the author of the Gospel of Mark. He is a senior administrator, if not the primus pilus, in Pilates official household and staff. Centurions were warrant officers/NCOs represented by the vine staff they carried. He is an alumnus of the Praetorian Guard, if not an active member because of his role with Pilate. Pilate was a career politician that rose to his role in Palestine through the Praetorian Guard and Cornelius came up the centurion career path. Cornelius had gone as far as he could as a centurion in Rome with the Italian Cohort, so he made a horizontal shift to the regular legions and may have come to Palestine with PIlate.

Cornelius began to develop an intelligence dossier on Jesus when He appeared over the Roman military horizon as a potential insurgent when He was baptized.  Herod, who was totally paranoid about John the Baptist, apparently began one with his own spy network but independent, and without reference to the Roman intelligence agenda. Matthew was apparently a mole for whoever his family gained its tax franchise from, Herod, which eventually was combined with the Roman dossier after Pilate and Herod became connected through Jesus. Matthew's contribution is especially evident in the red letters in the Gospels. Or the silver letters in a purple manuscript.

The evidence from the harmonization of the Roman content in the four Gospels, the period defined by the Roman chain of custody. All of that is a reconstruction of the the collective witness of the Roman military community directly involved this particular period. The evidence is that Pilate is truly mystified by the appearance of Jesus in this manner. At some point, the Roman intelligence analysts moved Jesus out of the insurgency category and in, actually, a pacifying factor in the Galilee. In the feeding of the 5000, Jesus takes the most lethal element of an unruly mob on a 20 mile run and then arranged them in a military manner and calmed them all down, fed them lunch and sent them home. It was all men and it was a crowd the size of a Roman legion. Yet, the impression is that the Zealot agenda didn't really exist in Galilee and Jesus took all the potential players out of play. I mean, the reason Pilate offers Barabbas as a choice is because he. Pilate, was trying to load the deck. Barabbas was as much a nuisance to the business model of the Temple money pump as he was to the Romans and Pilate is totally blindsided when the crowd chooses Jesus. Cornelius was probably an eyewitness to most of what happened when Jesus appeared in chains.

Cornelius is not the same centurion in Mark 15:39.  

Cornelius is justified by faith in Luke 7:9. Abraham is the only other person God justifies by faith in Genesis 15:6.

Sometime before his death in 37, Tiberius proposed that the Senate elevate Jesus to the status of legal deity, which was rejected by the Senate , according to Tertullian's Apology, Chapter 5. Tiberius was compelled by intelligence from Palestine to make this proposal. The Roman content of the Gospel of Peter was probably reflected the nature of the intelligence Tiberius received. Based on the journalistic quality of the Gospel of Mark that was produced by Pilate's staff headed up by Cornelius, who assured it ran up the proper channels of the Praetorian Guards to get to Tiberius in Capri. Tiberius was the first to introduce the nomenclature 'Christian" as a distinct category of Jewish religious affiliation connected with the resurrection. The Romans treat the whole Jesus movement like Jewish military technology that was a total mystery to the author of the Gospel of Mark, Cornelius.After his debriefing with Peter in Acts 10, he puts a military intelligence assessment together by the numbers, and in the thrall of the Holy Spirit, that is the empirical evidence spy networks are designed to capture. And it got to Rome at the same time Claudius was coming up to speed and Philo of Alexandria had an embassy to the Emperor regarding certain disputations with the Greeks in Alexandria. Tiberius knew that the rising agitation in the Empire needed to be fixed and I think the initial assessments from Palestine suggested that this Christian stuff might be the fix he needed, beyond the implications of the resurrection.

It is not clear why Paul wrote the letter to the Romans before he traveled there, but the timing suggests to me that Claudius directed the Praetorian Guard to acquire whatever manifesto it could from Paul that might represent cohesive structures Rome could exploit to address Philo of Alexandria represented.

At about the same time Paul forwards his epistle to Rome, Matthew connects all the theological dots in  the Gospel of Mark and creates a polemic in support of the Judaizers opposing Paul's mission to the Gentiles. Paul. of course, is merely proceeding on the ethical course Jesus established with the abrogation of all things kosher in Mark 7 and reinforced for Peter in Acts 10.  

People who employ Matthew to support their arguments regarding the theology of Paul are irony impaired. As I say, Matthew is an outlier in the historic vector of Mark-John and Luke/Acts. As a viable Christian agenda, Matthew was running in circles. However, in the larger perspective of God's plan, Matthew anticipates Mohammad and is written as the gateway for Muslims to renew their convenant membership in the Abrahamic nation. As I say, Sura 74:30 "And above it is 19" is the key that opens the gate of Sura Maryam 19:1 - 33l to Jesus by way of Egypt in Sura Yusef 12.  

But that's a different story. The thing is that both Jesus and Cornelius knew Yaweh, which is the basis of the "authority" the centurion cites. This authority relates directly to Romans 11:22 and it is this legal structure Paul brings to the Praetorian Guards in Romans that Constantine eventually adopts for the empire. And the triangulation of the resurrection with Romans 3:21 and authority essentially validates the secular legal structures of the Roman republic with a divine endorsement.

Unfortunately, Nero appears at that moment and the Christian agenda in the Praetorian Guards is stalled while the representation of Christians in the Legions proceeds until the critical mass is achieved at Milvian bridge.

Christianity formed pretty much like a Cotton Candy ball forming around a paper cone: the sugar strands are whirling around, chaotically until the paper cone provides an existential anchor around which to form, In the case of the currents the resurrection set into motion,  the Gospel of Mark is the paper cone. Christianity would have never left Palestine if Rome wasn't present.  And Cornelius created the paper cone.

[ramrodd]

COMMENTARY:

Now you know for sure why he slept on sandbags in Vietnam, if it wasn't evident before.

Makes you wonder what his classmates an West Point felt about "Hop Along Short Eyes" Moore.

[ramrodd]

Calibrate your Pucker Factor with the Holy Spirit

Neil, for various reasons, my vocation seems to be to introduce people I meet to the Holy Spirit on their own terms, safely and in a timely manner. It is written that the Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. One of my favorite line from psalms is 19:9.The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. There is more to that particular verse, but, in terms of the Holy Spirit, that's a useful point of departure.

The first step, in my mind, is to calibrate your pucker factor. One of the factors fueling the daily suicide rate of combat veterans at 22 is the fact that they come out of their military with highly calibrated pucker factors as the norm and enter a milieu where a calibrated pucker factor is based on high likability as the essential leadership trait.

I just signed a consent decree with a tenant who complained I assaulted him. The issue was around a key to a lock he had installed contrary to the terms of the lease he signed: I needed a duplicate for our common safety and security and he refused to give me one. His motivation for filing the petition for a restraining order is that he managed to trigger a fight-flight response in me that released my inner DI a la Full Metal Jacket and I blew him away. I scared him to death. He had never seen anything like that in real life and his statement is a monument to the hysteria our encounter created in him.

Now, one of the things he threw into the mix was the fact that I had a military background and was highly trained and my hands were weapons, which frightened him.

Well, all those things are true, but I haven't killed anybody in hand and hand since 1971, before I came home from Vietnam. The only kill I regret is a wounded prisoner I killed after a fair and legal capture. We had blown his legs sideways at the knees and there wasn't anything I could do to fix him or even ease him pain but to end it.

It was my first combat patrol. I was the platoon leader, but the patrol leader was Staff Sergeant Charley Funk. We were playing Ranger School for my benefit and the FNG (The Funny New Guy. Sir.). I am an Army brat and fitting with the local team is something I do like breathing. Anyway, Charley was in charge and I was just another grunt with a couple hours guard duty at night. I learned a huge amont from him before we contact, including how to set up a booby trap we called "Vampire": a claymore with a trip wire.

This is what this male nurse ran into. It turns out from the field intelligence we recoverd from this ecounter that we were in the middle of an NVA hospital center, all under ground. We worked on the other side of it in a subsequent patrol, moved by slick, just to survey its size. It was that kind of war. The Vampire went off, a guy started to scream and I was the first one to the kill zone, where I enounterd another individual. I couldn't see if he was armed, but it didn't matter. I killed him and my piece of shit M-16 jammed and I fell on my back and began to clear the jam when our Sergeant sniper, on his second tour, ran up to cover me and finished off my kill and then his M-14 blew up at the breech: it was his own hand made round for snipering. So, now, here we are, the leading edge of the spear and we don't even have our bayonets fixed. He looks at me as says, "Pretty exciting, huh, L.T.?". I got up and ran across the kill zone to secure the other side, where I continued to clear the jam. I couldn't shoot but I could shout a warning and let them cover me if I needed to withdraw.

So, on the way across the kill zone, I saw the guy Vampire had chewed up,noticed his legs: he was lying on his back with his knees flat against the ground and his legs going out sideways to the left.

Sergeant Funk came up and got the rest of the patrol busy with after-action SOPs, intelligence gathering and what not. Get in, Get done, Get gone. At some point without saying a word, the status of the POW was the only thing left to be done. It was my call. They were telling me they would carry out any heroic measure I required in his disposition. but, apparently, we didn't even have morphine, it was getting dark, there wasn't a good extraction point close by nor one we could defend and, well, there was only 5 months of shopping day until Christmas,

This was after My Lai and Lt. Calley was in the middle of a court martial and, if anybody was going down for shooting prisoners, it was going to be me:

Mission, Men, Self

Self-Discipline. Instant obedience. The fushion of the Stoic and the Epicurian at the nexus of Duty, Honor Country.

It was a no-brainer. This soldier's death is the only one I dwell on because I wonder, if my mommy was there, who was an Army wife and a registered nurse, what would she have done. What if it had been me or one of my men?

The most painful thing he would have had to endure was putting splints on him, but, once they are in place and any bleeding contained, he won't be comfortable until we can get some juice in him, but it won't be unmitigated torture. He could have endured it and he would be enjoying his grandchildren now.

But, that's how the Holy Spirit works in my life. I play back that loop and we both consider what happens and it has become a comfort to me for that reason. I can't change what happened, but the persistence of my authentic humility in reconsideration is another element in the calibration of my Pucker Factor.

And that's what this guy triggered, but his fear of a far more lethal response is totally unfounded. You see, the trigger for that sort of response is protected by the Holy Spirit. There have been times when that particular response was triggered and I did amazing things, elegant in their efficiency and efficacy. The thing is. I didn' know it was triggered until the enviromental challenge had been resoved and I was the last person standing. In Vietnam, it happened alot, which is what makes combat so fun, but it has happened in other context, particularly playing rugby, where it never involved slugging anybody. It was always something clever, like wiley Odysseus. That's the reason people love rugby and football: those moments of glory when you realized there was a burning of the heart and a gospel was born: Tidings of Joy:Victory is Ours. Tetelestai!

That final inhibition has never been removed by the Holy Spirit, the one when your Lock and Load become Rock and Roll and you spend the rest of your light replaying those loops, first, to wring out the lessons learned and observed intelligence, and, then. over the years, as part of that photo album you keep on Rolledex in your unconscious that plays back videos you can conjure with a favorite song from back in the day.

So, anyway, I didn't really discover the operation of the Holy Spirit until 1990, when I was teaching Sunday School at St Albams when Frank Wade was Rector and Caroline Pyle was an Associate Rector and Sunday School Warden. She said something that got me reading commentary as part of my due diligence as the SME for Young Adults. 16 - 18. my daugher's age at the time. And I stumbled across the line in Mark 3:29 "But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of eternal sin.” And a bunch of stuff fell into place that changed my perspective on the purpose of the Bible as epistemological: how to know The One as described in Revelation 4:2 and share as a covenant partner in the Kingdom of Heaven as defined by N.T. Wright. The here and now. What Terry Collins brings into the lives of his soccer players.

Anyway, I became aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit in real time in various ways. It has been a fascinating relationship and it is the missing element in all Protestant doctrine, so far as I can tell. Justication is a foundation of the American Evangelical business model because it depends upon "forensic justification", which basically transforms the Gospels into a legal argument as allegory. And the purpose is to control meaning to maximize the monetization of Jesus. And, in so doing, it denies the Holy Spirit. One result is the Trump Tax Reforms and another is the Prison Industrial Complex. The Evangelical business model is based on the love of money, which is to say, idolatry.

From a perspective informed by the Holy Spirit, Reaganomics has a display in neon which says "Class Warfare" and "Vulture Capitalism".

I first intuited the absence of the Holy Spirit in Campus Crusade for Christ. There is more to the story, but, my question after considering the 4 Spiritual Laws, was "Then What?" If you have already been born again or come to Jesus completely, how do you employ this new spiritual plateau to live in Christian Stewardship as a career soldier.

The answer is The Holy Spirit but it wasn't even suggested in Bill Bright's theology or doctrine. Or in the current drivel being force-fed into Trump's brain in basically the same re-programing process Evangelicals use to "cure" gays. They are basically reversing the process Jesus used to flush Legion out of the Gadarene Demoniac and into the swine. They are turning his mind into pig shit.

But my interest is in promoting the Holy Spirit as a guide to the epistemology of the Bible. And the first step for rookies is to Calibrate your pucker factor.

[ramrodd]

COMMENTARY:

Trumpkins Little Fingers lied to us?

Tell me it ain't so!