Dale Amidei's Blog, page 2

More Than Being Here

You’ve heard it more than once: “We’re all Americans.” The phrase is a standardized rhetorical tool, and it’s used often by those attempting to foist another questionable narrative on bystanders surrounding the arena of ideas. Premises dubious and solid comprise political discourse in this county. Mere embrace of this particular canard is prima facie evidence of civic illiteracy at best in the current environment, where granting such benefit of doubt is often tantamount to willing denial.

No, we’re not all Americans. Not even close.

America is an ideal, a construct of interrelated ideas. America formed in the minds of men and women at a time where the capacity for deliberate thought was the valued measure of intellect, and whose survival of rational criticism led to its adoption and proliferation out of a sense of morality, and destiny, and shared benefit.

America, as an ideal, stands as a bright shining inspiration and aspiration set as a goal pursued by those who understand it. As such, this apex philosophy of human governance—proliferated through its ideology—rests in the premise that just powers derive from the consent of the governed. It was a radical concept at the end of the age of the supposedly divine right of kingship, and it endures here in opposition to the tide of globalized homogenization those who presume to be a ruling class envision for the future.

America was founded by folk who understood the concept of a ruling class not only reflects base instincts of humanity’s sin nature, but denies the actual divine bestowment of human rights they attempted to delineate in our founding documents. Thought, remember, was a valued process at the time, refined and arrived at through an established regimen of construction and examination.

And when the founders were finished, they went to war against those who thought otherwise. That, too, reflects a state of affairs, again due to the aberrations of will manifesting in human nature, which will never be otherwise. It’s our Constitution. Come and take it, mother lovers.

No, we’re not all Americans. We’re all citizens, a status conferred at birth (to those whose parents are not under the authority of a foreign government, but that’s another discussion). As such, we as a body of citizenry are Americans, or victims of the divisive politics of envy and identity, and/or globalized socialists, communists, reprobates, and/or outright traitors. As in the LGBTQ∞ lexicon, the listing will never be complete, because there are innumerable ways to do anything incorrectly.

“Do you think we don’t love our country?” I was, once, posed that question by a state district court judge whose politics reflected her ignorance, not treason. She herself declared wards of the state children loved by their parents, who were endangered by their continued custody. Likewise, applied ideological Americanism is going to disenfranchise those whose ambition far outstrips their common sense, capacity for servant leadership, or patriotism.

Accountability is the prime mover of representative democracy, which is why the current administration is struggling after the short-term gains reaped from an obviously and undeniably fraudulent and stolen 2020 election. The Democratic Party is a potentially terminal illness putrefying the body of American governance, and their excision is their nation’s route toward healing. They did it to themselves and will do more and worse.

Here, and in the truck-choked arteries of Canada, and in the streets of European capitals filled with citizens who have had enough presumption from the self-appointed “ruling class,” political ideologies embracing liberty under the consent of the governed are undergoing resurgence. The maintenance of freedom, as our founders intended, is the realm of an engaged and involved citizenry. Tyrants thrive under the delusion that the people will do as they’re told, when the natural state is quite the reverse.

The principle has been stated here before: the extension and institutionalization of a false premise eventually leads to systemic collapse. It will be so for the Democratic Party, their doddering, unnaturally elevated and demented figurehead Joe Biden, for Big Pharma’s COVID narrative, and for the intransigent moral weakness of Justin Trudeau.

There is an ordained order of loyalties to The God Who Is, and to one’s nation, descending through the institution of natural marriage and resultant family and community. All follow the delineated virtues whose embrace forms a stable foundation for the life to follow. The benefits of faith, fealty and dedication to that beyond our immediate self result and manifest in strength emanating from the inside out and produce a personal effect an order of magnitude beyond self interest.

The effect is that of a fulfilled soul. That store of wealth is eternal: the compounded interest of investment of talents Jesus declared essential.

We, invested with free will as well, embrace or reject each virtue and vice in the matrix of character and are measured as loving or evil, intelligent or limited, cognizant or ignorant, servant or enemy. The results will be evident in our personal lives, our communities, and our countries. Faith says we shall, at the end of our days, be called to account for how we have lived.

We, here in the States at least, are for or against the tenets of ideological Americanism, and being so is the measure of whether or not we deserve to claim the title of American. The unifying inclusiveness of the ideology crosses national boundaries and may bear other titles. But as the current surge in populism reflects, those who presume to lead in disregard of the consent of the governed have sufficiently cautionary examples in history to conclude that the age of tyrants is over, and that freedom, like water, may crash as well as flow.

There is, as Paul implied, above a certain level no male or female, no one enslaved or free, none Jew or Greek. We in our ideal state are souls cognizant of the rights granted to us at our Creation, for a purpose designated therein and under a duty to edify and elevate one another toward a common noble destiny. As ever, we have love, hate and indifference beckoning along the way … and it never was any more complicated than that, really.

Choose to love. -DA

*****

In production news, the Editress is approximately three-quarters along in her processes of editing the seventh title of Boone’s File, Two Years With Master Quan. Boone’s first adventure and final novel appears to remain on track for a second-quarter publication date and before predictable summer doldrums descend on the industry. More updates as we  may!

Dr. King’s Dream in 2022

I arrived in Chicago via train on April 4, 1968, as a preschool child traveling with his family to visit an aunt who was recovering from surgery. I have only fleeting memories of that trip: the sounds of the tracks and diesel smell of the engine, and the odd configuration of the onboard restroom toilet. I don’t remember the anxious rush of relatives who met us at the train station wanting to get us away from the downtown area.

That was the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. My cognizant life has been lived in the man’s legacy.

Mid-1950s Southern Democrats, ninety years after losing the Civil War, continued to cling to acculturated race-based tiers of society. As society progressed and those outmoded ways of thinking encountered the same sort of ideological headwinds which ended slavery in the previous century, it fell to Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks to spark the formative challenge of Alabama’s racial segregation. The result was the Civil Rights movement lasting another decade, in which Americans of African descent demanded equal footing in their nation and in which Martin Luther King, Jr. rose to the prominence that eventually cost him his life.

Shortly afterward, it was the same Democratic Party—who lost ownership of their slaves a hundred years prior, and who vehemently opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act—formulating a controlling strategy only slightly less abhorrent than presuming to categorize another human being as property. Blacks, unable to be kept in place through intimidation, were now introduced to the more subtle bondage of family-destroying dependence on social welfare programs. Black Americans, having only just overcome the shackles of segregation, became Black Democrats and began voting for their political masters in rates invading the ninetieth percentile.

The battle for equal footing in the pursuit of excellence and of the American vision—and Dr. King’s dream of defining quality of character—has been replaced on the political Left by the pursuit of lame advantage. It happened first through empowerment conferred by the aforementioned engineered monolithic voting bloc. Via leveraging divisive politics of racial identity and evolving into the ongoing woke culture, the Democratic Party descended into our modern day’s last harbor of the slave-owning mentality in a nation they innately despise. Steering the vulnerable into the morass of a cultivated victim mentality has been the Democrats’ primary strategy since, comprising a continuous tug on loose strings in the fabric of American society.

To abandon economic morality and seek gains outside the rewards of excellence requires confiscating the fruits of the more capable. Doing so by wile rather than force requires such to be handed over rather than taken. Acquiescing to such assumption also had to be engineered, and so we arrived at the second great strategy of the political Left: the assignment of unwarranted guilt, again on the basis of race. Nothing more is required to acquire the label of racism than refusing to accept the undeserved accusation, and deconstructing the underlying premise as indefensible only causes one’s accusers to increase their volume.

No one living today’s American society has ever experienced institutional slavery here. Outside of the scourge of communism and the doctrinal servitude continuing to be practiced in Islam, the incongruity of slavery was reconciled with my nation’s founding principles within a lifetime of their establishment and with the greatest cost of life in our military history. Dr. King’s dream embraced nothing of inherited grievance. To do so is bondage imposed by the same spirit of envy driving the increasingly sputtering engine of the political Left.

The pursuit of lame advantage might indeed result in advantage. The lameness, however, will be more consistently enduring.

Dr. King’s dream that his children would be assessed by the content of their character was an ideologically American dream. It’s one currently making inroads in the fracturing Democrat voting blocs who, being as capable of intellectual influence as any other demographic, continue in increasing numbers to realize the intentional limitations of the victim mentality. There is an essential humanitarian disconnect in those who profess concern with their supporters’ state while actually pursuing a lame advantage of their own: in valuing sustained political empowerment well in excess of any benefit conferred to their enabling constituents.

There is no racial component to ideological Americanism. Rally under the red, white, and blue banner of my tribe. Stand for the Anthem and you’re in. Appreciate what history is available to teach us all how to comport ourselves going forward. We may do so edified by the experiences of our forebears and by the rational criticism of premises that drove their striving in days gone by, whether we view them in the present day as points of light or shadow.

This fragile American experiment is an anomaly in humanity’s long history of governmental tyranny. The dark spirit of despair holds slaves of its own, chained by the deception that little else matters beyond our selfish concerns, that justice is synonymous with confiscation, and that the whispered choice between love, hate and indifference matters less than the braying voice of covetousness driving its victims to take what they’re told they have inherited the right to snatch away.

Be the people, and Martin Luther King, Jr. will be proud.

Choose to love – DA

*****

In production news, the Editress is now working in the second half of the seventh and concluding novel of Boone’s File, Two Years with Master Quan. God willing, the title will appear in the second quarter of this year. While we wait for Boone’s origin story, as told to a little girl who asked, pick up her first novel, Absinthe and Chocolate, as a free download or priced inexpensively as allowed wherever your eBooks come alive.

Resolve

As I write this, we are not even a week into what is considered inside the Perimeter to be the cruelest month. Dear kitteh TR, often the first one up to the top as a kitten, ascended to the New House on New Year’s Day in 2009, and his brother Gordon on January 30 three years later. Today, January 6, is Gato’s Day, when we miss and remember a good cat—strong, brave, and levelheaded—on the second anniversary of losing our beloved orange stepchild.

That’s the way of things when committing to love someone not likely to outlive you. It takes an essential sort of courage to do so regardless, and dealings with what comes next comprise life lessons purposely bestowed as subjects of contemplation. We would not have them any other way, which is good, considering they will never be any other way.

This year, January 6 is also the anniversary of losing something, if only temporarily, that was supposed to far outlast us: namely the bestowment of just powers, derived from the consent of the governed, via the treasured institution of free and fair elections. Worse, we didn’t lose this through any progression of natural process. It was taken from us quite unnaturally by traitors and criminals who think they knew better how things should be than did America’s Founders.

Over the course of the past year it’s become painfully obvious the current administration and legislative branches are populated on the political Left by individuals elevated through obvious and undeniable interstate fraud. That none of those usurpers have been shot or hanged to date speaks well of the level of civility remaining on the right side of the bell-shaped curve of distribution defining the spectrum of American politics.

Today, hand-wringing commentators more devoted to narrative than integrity will decry the protest at the Capitol of January 6, 2021 as testimony otherwise. Those who have examined the footage and evidence know the unfortunate events of that day were planned and orchestrated by instigators for the exact effect achieved: a coup unopposed by the only strategy which would have prevented the embarrassing debacle of the Biden administration.

Despite conducting the national election in ways that were unconstitutional and illegal at the federal and state levels, corrupt state executives and legislatures allowed their respective electors to present the bounty of Democrat fraud to the Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, then presiding over the Senate. His inadequacy was the last ditch that could have decided the election in the House of Representatives, where a preponderance of Republican-majority state delegations reside. For reasons that are equally incomprehensible as his decision to forgo courage, he has since been allowed to appear in public wearing trousers rather than the Swamp Skirt (Pence-ill skirt?) he earned one year ago today.

Mike Pence thinks he’s going to be the Republican candidate for President one day. The Hindenburg was once considered the future of air travel, as well.

Anyway….

The Democrats’ political machine, simply dying to rule, is also killing to rule. Besides Ashli Babbitt, who was shot to death without reasonable justification by Capitol Police officer Lester Holt, Rosanne Boyland died after being beaten during a brutal assault on protesters in a tunnel on the lower west side of the Capitol building. Since those losses, patriots who vented their outrage at a stolen election have been hunted with facial recognition and cell phone network identifiers, interrogated, imprisoned without trial, and harassed by federal authorities, while entrapping instigators such as Ray Epps walk free.

I ditched Facebook before the current regime took power in Washington, recognizing the site would only become target designators in a brave new world dominated for a time by the unelected and unaccountable power-mad in D.C. Prior, I was acquainted with the head of the South Carolina Tea Party, Pressley Stutts, who was invited onto the Capitol steps by its police officers, and whose selfies posted there earned him harassment by the TSA (“We know where you were on January 6th”) that he feared would last a lifetime.

COVID treatment protocols killed Pressley when he was hospitalized with the virus later that same year, but that is another story.

We have endured the Biden administration for twelve months now. A showcase of exemplary inadequacy, as a result of their wrongheaded policies the country’s economy has suffered, sixty percent of respondents now see Joe Biden as a weak president, and nearly every appearance by the man generates more speculation on what his neurological future holds. Spoiler: it holds as little promise as do those determined to ignore The Way Things Are.

Attempting to wish away consequence is a dead-end road traveled by childish minds and the distinguishing characteristic of the political Left. The delusion promising that sin brings profit is eventually set right for liars, thieves, plagiarists, and the perverse and corrupt. Joe Biden is demonstrably all of those things. His son Hunter is further testament to the deficient character of the man who produced him, and his historical legacy will only be that of a doddering figurehead elevated via fraud by a controlling cabal of opportunists, traitors, reprobates, and idiots. Their temporary advantage can and should have only one result:  the desiccated political viability of the Democratic Party smoldering in the ruins of the midterm elections of 2022 and the presidential contest conducted under reforms to be put in place between now and 2024.

Today’s Democratic Party is living in a Matrix-like construct engineered entirely by their own aversion to wisdom. And as in the most recent installment of that cinematic franchise, they are also dedicated to the deliberate dismantling of what came before.

No person of normal sensibilities embraces their own destruction. Doing so has been an indicator of mental illness since our species has been sufficiently self-aware to detect those thus afflicted. Degrading the moral and ideological fabric of one’s society roots in self-hatred spawned by the dark patron spirit currently dominating Hollywood. In the same venomous vein driven by colluding inner voices, producers, directors, and politicos seem determined to tear down the institutions that edified and inspired their adherents in favor of agendas that cannot stand against rational criticism.

I have a degree in psychology, and none of the theories I studied for years explains such a state of dedicated and demented human evil as this: their patron spirit wants them (and us) dead.

Individuals locating on the left half of the bell-shaped curve have a common pathology. As the political Left sees government as the summit of authority promising the license to impose their will, the immoral Left (seldom apolitical) holds the apex of the human experience to be indulgence in abyssal depths of depravity without criticism or apparent consequence. Both are manifestations of captivity in the deadly sin of lust.

Politicians currently exploiting the engineered optics of January 6, 2021 have been frustrated in their agenda of overreach over the past year. They rushed into their wish list of tyranny, forgetting that governance in the United States is bounded by Constitutional limits. Those powers not specifically granted belong instead to the States, per the Tenth Amendment’s stipulation.

In the case of the immoral Left, The Way Things Are stymie every plan to escape consequence, consigning transgressors to the judgment of natural law. In both cases indefensible actions, once institutionalized, will inevitably result in systemic collapse rather than being accepted as “the new normal.”

And it doesn’t matter whether that system is the Democratic Party, fiscal irresponsibility, or the terminus of the gastrointestinal tract. Matters there don’t end well when pursued past their limits.

Government manifesting servant leadership rather than oppression roots in the self-governance of a responsible electorate elevating like minds to the righteous authority free and fair elections allow. Since the current cabal found themselves empowered by other means, it was to be expected that the following months would see things go from bad to worse. Natural law is by design a teacher whose harsh lessons impart to those at a distance lasting comprehension of why certain behaviors should be avoided.

It’s the time of year to set goals and pursue aspirations, as we look forward while holding close the lessons of the past. The challenges ahead of we patriots and folk of valid faith require more than resolutions, though. They require resolve to embrace strength rather than weakness. Being strong, we can legitimately demand and cultivate strength in others. Holding ourselves accountable, we can apply the same standards of accountability elsewhere. Believing, we are empowered to propagate awareness of the state of actuality lending an appreciation for the levels and planes of governance beyond the apparent. Having grasped eternal constructs in The Way Things Are, we may proceed to meet the challenges of a new year without fear of tomorrow.

We are meant to live as free folk, not livestock, and in courage, not trepidation. Those who think otherwise might need to be convinced in 2022, but it has never been and never will be otherwise.

Choose to love, -DA

****

In production news, the Editress is midway through Boone’s seventh and concluding title, Two Years with Master Quan. Current progress is hinting at a late spring/early summer release, God willing. Boone, Thibaut, Quan and others you’ve not yet met will be worth the wait, I promise.

Christmas Is

Christmas is fast approaching as I write this. The thirty-fifth deployment of the Perimeter’s little tree is complete, and it again stands guard over both artfully- and man-wrapped gifts. Its accompanying stuffed Christmas Moose and Penguin are intermittently on station when not being abducted and abused by Kitteh Leo, who is also responsible for one of the Editress’s ceramic ornaments not being quite what it was last year.

Music by Elvis, Mannheim Steamroller and others pervades the ambiance. Die Hard has been viewed already, featuring the annual Dropping of the Hans and remembrance of those lost in 1988 at the Nakatomi Tower. The Season is here.

There are many answers one might garner when asking others what Christmas is. Some will be hostile and defensive, projecting a spittled tirade shot through with the false premises guiding those who revile this time of year. As with every good thing, there are those who just don’t understand.

It’s a federal holiday, a long weekend, and a time for family. It’s the medieval institutionalization of the pagan observance of the Winter Solstice rebranded in a new paradigm by the early Church as Christianity gained dominance via western civilization’s governing hierarchy. Yes, Christmas is all those things. But it’s more.

Christmas is rooted in the historical appearance of the Christ Child. The birth of Jesus is celebrated at the end of December out of tradition, though Scripture hints of His arriving during the Feast of Tabernacles occurring in the fall instead. History is what it is, and all of its distracting errata cannot overshadow the fact that He arrived, just as it cannot hide the truth that He Was, and Is, and Is To Come. Without Jesus, it and we are emptied of what matters most.

That foundational premise comprises a hard stop for unbelieving souls: the Holiday Season crowd, happy to partake in days off and satisfied to celebrate materialism, themselves, or whatever else in the human experience they feel should occupy our attention instead. The Christmas Spirit is a Christian Spirit, being an outgrowth of the essential orientation of faith, as are many other attributes of life being lived as it should. We proceed, faith says, in a binary system of ones and zeroes, with every aspect of our existence being within or in opposition to the Will of God.

My writing started with my character Jon Anthony, in whose theology he espoused a “reduction to essence” which, as such luminaries as Lao Tzu and Winnie the Pooh agreed, begins at the beginning. Our essential orientation defines us, being a set of unavoidable and existential questions we answer in our actions if not contemplation. In those, we have two patron spirits vying for our affiliation; their hallmarks are vitality or decay, nurture or predation, connection or isolation, love and hate, and many other opposites. Every choice made is dominated by a spirit of light or darkness, with valid faith being the determinate factor of each turn toward fulfillment or folly. It’s not much of a mystery which patron benefits us most: it’s the one Who wishes us at each juncture to live rather than die.

History is a resource presenting us the opportunity to grow via the life lessons of others rather than relying on our own limited experience, and as such attending or ignoring the opportunity is another of the binary choices we all must make. And the history of the Christian experience, an appearance which was delayed into historical times, is one on which we can rely.

We can reference, through Roman historians long passed into eternity, confirmation of the Census of Quinirius in the years of Augustus that prompted the travel of Joseph’s new family to Bethlehem. Likewise, the later ministry of the Christ Child grown into manhood would be documented by Josephus in his tome The Jewish Wars. Christmas Is because Jesus Is, and we who have looked into the subject have rational assurance of all these events rather than needing to take any of them on blind faith, as the faithless accuse. But to see these things one must look, while the distraction from that search is the goal of every effort of the enemy. Every experience derives from the victory of one or another of the two competing spirits who vie for us all; spiritually, politically, and personally.

Observance is telling once one understands. The Spirit bestows the gift of what the Greeks called Diakrisis, the discernment of spirits. It can be a burden to see people from the inside out. There you’ll find inflamed, self-inflicted wounds, the fever of guilt, and addiction to premises that poison the mind before they infect the soul. But the joy of recognizing love’s driving force is there to discover as well, and the hope of healing one to the other is what keeps our walk of faith vital and relevant.

To live as we’re meant, we need to understand all we can, and there’s no better time of year to begin. Christmas presents, you see, cannot compete with Christmas Presence. Understood in its fullness, the season never has to end. There is strength there to be had through simple recognition of The Way Things Are, blinding as its initial insight might be.

Your inner eye will adjust. Trust me … and then trust Him with everything.

Merry Christmas. Choose to love. -DA

*****

In production news, the Editress is somewhere in the vicinity of forty percent through production editing of Boone’s concluding novel, Two Years with Master Quan. Our favorite redhead’s first and last adventure, set during her postdoctoral studies in Vietnam and featuring Thibaut, Quan, and others, will appear next year as God is willing. If you’ve not yet been, her previous six novels are a trip worth the time.

Season of Gratitude

As I write this, we are enjoying Thanksgiving. Its historical context remains as a remembrance of salvation through altruism, and its enduring value, even with reduced emphasis of its history, is as a reminder that we are the recipients of blessings. As moral and faithful people, we should by implication dedicate ourselves to an “attitude of gratitude.” To institutionalize gratefulness, as the holiday achieved, only strengthens us individually and societally.

Life is not all blessings, of course. This experience we pass through on the road to eternity is at once a trial and training. On the way, it presents challenges building us in the same way we exercise our bodies with weights. The weights are a constant. But they seem lighter as we grow stronger, and then we lift more as God is willing.

One of my weights this year is the passing of a dear friend, one made in the course of online interaction and who I never managed to meet in person over a span of more than twenty years. I first knew Robyn under her AOL screen name of “Woblynyetski,” and eventually she became simply “Wobs.” She had the distinction of being a survivor of breast cancer that whole time, facing her continually ongoing treatments with optimism and dignity and without a shred of self-pity or despair. As such, she remains one of the brightest souls I’ve met on my own road.

Facebook eventually replaced AOL, of course, and until my exit from that intrusive, overbearing, repulsive, ideologically reprobative platform last year, it allowed us to keep in touch. Afterward, we occasionally corresponded in email … until one day my last send went unanswered.

I found her obituary via an online search and knew her fight to the finish with cancer was over. The disease never did win, for she took every one of those little bastard cells with her and accounted for millions more in previous battles.

I wish I could say with assurance she traveled on under the grace of Christ. Wobs, you see, advocated and promoted Scientology. As I know from the account of an acquainted author friend, whose mother herself was another author of prominence, L. Ron Hubbard expressed an aim to organize his own religion as a means of accumulating wealth. I have no reason to doubt her mother’s account, as the man was, at the time, their family friend and frequent visitor, and the organization he later spawned continues to reap a certain financial levy on those whom it attracts.

Robyn knew of Jesus. I never heard her discount the testimony of the New Testament or show any hostility toward Christianity. Rather, I had the distinct impression that she made available, aside from any motive of its founder, the supposedly scientific methods of self-improvement Scientology advocates, I’m convinced, out of her sincere motivation to benefit others.

Robyn was one of most cheerful and loving friends I’ve known, and it’s easy to draw distinctions between her and those who give me far less hope. One cannot avoid them if interested in what Thomas Jefferson so aptly phased, “the Course of human events.”

Truly evil people make the news almost daily. They hoard billions, they rise to the highest levels of government, they pursue fame until they’re known in every corner of the world, discount God’s work of life, and they debase themselves in what the physical plane can offer until they are exhausted. And when their expended souls stand to be judged, and there is no voice to rise in their defense, they will be utterly without hope. What futility. What terror. What tragic myopia. Hateful, hard-eyed, avaricious bundled tares who could not be dissuaded from betting everything they had on the wager that there is no God to judge them will only wait for their inevitable verdict.

Scientology makes just this bet. Did Robyn? I wish I had asked. My intuition says she did not, extrapolating from the influences evident on her soul. The name of Jesus did not repel her. I saw life in her eyes in every selfie, and I witnessed love in her every action. Her patron spirit was bright rather than coiled in darkness, and it’s knowing her that gives me hope that her soul found its advocacy in Christ as she rose to her assessment of the investiture of caring with which she had been bestowed.

I myself cannot diminish the evident love in the sacrifice of Jesus and reduce it to an excluding point of doctrinal legalism. I reject the notion that salvation is the result of something we do, and rather embrace Paul’s assertion that it is the result of grace through faith not of ourselves.

I sense God’s work succeeding where He wills, and through many divergent avenues. For it to be otherwise would represent Him as less able in what He does than I’m prepared to accept. Suffice to say I have found my essential premises surviving shrill voices accusing me of ecumenism or heresy, as they’ve done for a decade after The Anvil of the Craftsman first appeared.

Jesus touches whatever soul He will, which afterward can never be the same. He is a facet of what we see in the combined workings of the Trinity to bring about His own ends.

Absent His patron spirit, life is lived otherwise than what I observed in Robyn. The lost are predated along their way by the distractions of the enemy, and too many of them are fixated on living well rather than as they should. What should have been an orientation toward gratitude has been replaced by the spiritual poison of deadly, sinful pride.

Pride is not necessarily a bad thing when justified by worthwhile accomplishment. The feeling encourages us to work harder and achieve more, and as such is edifying. Sinful pride arises from rewarded avarice and the gratified lust for influence the dark patron spirit of the lost is happy to indulge. Evil dulls the sense within us that there is something beyond ourselves worthy of our worship and allegiance, and so cuts us off from an essential life lesson we need to grasp in order to come through it truly alive.

Seeing none of that over a long association with Robyn is what gives me hope. Our entire time I made no secret of my own faith, so she was witness to a quarter-century of discussions in the various arenas of ideology that we shared. Robyn found her way along through grasping what she could, and I must hope she’s safe now … where light and life and joy abound, and where those who choose to love at their core are preserved by what Jesus did, being a blessing as his announcing angels declared: “to all the people.”

My last correspondence with her, now some six months past, contained a single concerning note, that Robyn had subjected herself to COVID vaccination. I have no idea what the effect was on her immune system, but there is plenty of evidence of the mRNA infusion being detrimental., as the sudden appearance of cancers afterward in others warn. I truly hope she did not, as so many others have, suffer from the advice of people she assumed in confidence to have her best interests in mind. That my precious friend would have perished from trust would be a travesty.

There are many aspects of life of which I wish I could be sure, and yearn to have more fully appreciated my many blessings … but to have known Robyn as my friend was surely one of them, and I am thankful that I knew her.

In the end, we have the voice of the Spirit to guide and inspire us, people to cross our path, and things to do as we’re led. Of what I’m certain includes the convictions that we need to love, we need to trust, and we need to believe it all means something. Most of all we need to be grateful, because gratitude is a key that unlocks a future warm and bright instead of unimaginably horrid. One fate or the other never ends, as Jesus was here to assure us.

I wish you a deeply meaningful Thanksgiving and a joyous follow-though to Christmas!

Choose to love. -DA

*****

In production news, the Editress is currently working at 19% Production Edit on Boone’s first and last adventure, Two Years with Master Quan, as told (in part, anyway) to a little girl who asked. Look for the seventh novel of Boone’s File next year!

Sister’s Shadow is Live!

With the Big Three (Kindle, Apple, and Nook) having gotten their retail pages going, we have arrived at effective Full Release for my latest effort. The final novel in Daniel Sean Ritter’s series takes him back to Bosnia, in search of closure for painful memories arising out of his time in that horrid civil war. There, a surreptitious checkup on his last living link to a lost love draws him into the web of Bosnia once more in a tale that, according to his first readers, is knocking it out of the park.

Here’s the blurb:

“Sabrina Crnjak, forever scarred by childhood tragedies arising out of the Bosnian Civil War, now uses her pain as motivation in bringing the instigators of atrocities to justice. When a former Serb defense minister is granted a shocking acquittal in the Hague, the unacceptable outcome provokes her in-depth investigation.

Soon Brina finds herself the target of forces wishing to make both Goran Kos and his pursuer simply disappear. After a lone protector appears, the conflict intensifies as evidence, secreted away years prior, threatens to reveal war criminals who would benefit from present-day inclusion in a continental economy.

With the archive vital to the survival of both sides, a deadly contest ensues. Overwhelming manpower and seemingly inexhaustible resources threaten to crush both Brina and a man whose depth of connection to her life she can only suspect … Daniel Sean Ritter.”

Ten years after he first appeared, this is his latest, possibly his best … and his last. Don’t miss it.

Amazon for the Kindle and trade paperback.
Apple for iOS devices.
Barnes and Noble for the Nook.

Choose to love, -DA

*****

In production news, the Editress has begun Content Edit on the seventh title and series wrap of Boone’s File, a retrospective taking us back to her years in Vietnam. Specifically, Two Years with Master Quan. It will be a treat for those who’ve wondered about how she began the life we watched her lead, as told to a little girl who asked. Look for Boone to return next year!

September 11, 2021—Remember Always

Revisiting this post, which originally appeared here ten years ago. Nothing at all, unfortunately, needs updating:

I remember on hearing of the first plane crashing into the World Trade Center’s North Tower that it reminded me of another aircraft incident, the 1945 impact of a B-25 bomber into the Empire State Building one foggy morning. We all thought the first onslaught in the morning of September 11, 2001, a horrid accident. We kept that thought until the second impact a little more than fifteen minutes later, when it was obvious that we were under attack.

Business stopped. We crowded around a small TV in the office, watching the video of the impact on the South Tower and the horrible events afterward. People speculated about the responsible organization. Those of us who followed current events knew that it was Al Qaeda under Bin Laden’s direction, knowing what we did of the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The only comment that I remember making, standing there with my tie loosened, was “You mother[censored]. You want a Holy War, that’s what you’re gonna get.”

This was not exactly an appropriate comment for someone in a government leadership position. No one ever said a thing about it, except one of the younger employees that I supervised, whose response was to look at me and say, “Dude.”

A lot has happened in the last ten years. The Peace Dividend that we had looked forward to with the end of the Cold War evaporated instantly, and the War on Terror began. The world has taken on a far different form than we expected at the beginning of the third quarter of 2001. Faith wavered, and our national will was turned by the incessantly whining voices of the Left, until they gained power. The next four years was spent by a liberal political majority gorging at the trough of the American economy. A binge of insatiable government spending wilting the economy, the crushing economic consequences of the collapse of the Left’s interference in mortgage lending, and a nation weary of the costs of war all helped in the election of the current President. Some of the most pathetic years in the history of the office have followed.

Much like the human disaster of September 11th, the economic and cultural disaster of the current administration will leave rubble in its wake. It will have other aftereffects as well. More people than ever are politically active, and the most of the energy is from the conservative, hyper-competent elements of society. Constitutional government and free-market capitalism is in resurgence, now that the antithesis has been proven by its results so unworkable. People have clear comparisons to draw and harsh lessons to remember in which political and economic philosophies produce progress and folly. The lesson is of generational scope, and soon the landscape of American politics will change, just as the world scene has changed after 9/11.

In each case enemies of freedom came at us to make us weaker and made us stronger instead. Adversity does that. It is the seedbed of character. Without circumstances to overcome, we would be complacent. Without embracing the victims of disaster, we could not experience empathy. Nobility and courage would have no opportunity to prove their worth. These are all part of the eternity of answers that are available whenever the question “How can a loving God let this happen?” is asked.

We remember, and we have tried to learn from that day. God works yet in history to bring about His own ends, and faith brings strength, while hate, faithlessness, delusion and feckless self-interest hasten our demise. We continue to hope, as generations of the faithful have throughout history. We pray that somehow— this time— the lessons will be remembered.

Choose to Love, -DA

*****

With all respect to the day, there is production news, as the Editress has finished her efforts on Daniel Sean Ritter’s concluding novel, his return to Bosnia in Sister’s Shadow. File formatting and final quality checks are ahead before a publication date will be announced, but I anticipate a release this month, God willing. Updates here ASAP.

September 11, 2011—Remember Always

Revisiting this post, which originally appeared here ten years ago. Nothing at all, unfortunately, needs updating:

I remember on hearing of the first plane crashing into the World Trade Center’s North Tower that it reminded me of another aircraft incident, the 1945 impact of a B-25 bomber into the Empire State Building one foggy morning. We all thought the first onslaught in the morning of September 11, 2001, a horrid accident. We kept that thought until the second impact a little more than fifteen minutes later, when it was obvious that we were under attack.

Business stopped. We crowded around a small TV in the office, watching the video of the impact on the South Tower and the horrible events afterward. People speculated about the responsible organization. Those of us who followed current events knew that it was Al Qaeda under Bin Laden’s direction, knowing what we did of the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The only comment that I remember making, standing there with my tie loosened, was “You mother[censored]. You want a Holy War, that’s what you’re gonna get.”

This was not exactly an appropriate comment for someone in a government leadership position. No one ever said a thing about it, except one of the younger employees that I supervised, whose response was to look at me and say, “Dude.”

A lot has happened in the last ten years. The Peace Dividend that we had looked forward to with the end of the Cold War evaporated instantly, and the War on Terror began. The world has taken on a far different form than we expected at the beginning of the third quarter of 2001. Faith wavered, and our national will was turned by the incessantly whining voices of the Left, until they gained power. The next four years was spent by a liberal political majority gorging at the trough of the American economy. A binge of insatiable government spending wilting the economy, the crushing economic consequences of the collapse of the Left’s interference in mortgage lending, and a nation weary of the costs of war all helped in the election of the current President. Some of the most pathetic years in the history of the office have followed.

Much like the human disaster of September 11th, the economic and cultural disaster of the current administration will leave rubble in its wake. It will have other aftereffects as well. More people than ever are politically active, and the most of the energy is from the conservative, hyper-competent elements of society. Constitutional government and free-market capitalism is in resurgence, now that the antithesis has been proven by its results so unworkable. People have clear comparisons to draw and harsh lessons to remember in which political and economic philosophies produce progress and folly. The lesson is of generational scope, and soon the landscape of American politics will change, just as the world scene has changed after 9/11.

In each case enemies of freedom came at us to make us weaker and made us stronger instead. Adversity does that. It is the seedbed of character. Without circumstances to overcome, we would be complacent. Without embracing the victims of disaster, we could not experience empathy. Nobility and courage would have no opportunity to prove their worth. These are all part of the eternity of answers that are available whenever the question “How can a loving God let this happen?” is asked.

We remember, and we have tried to learn from that day. God works yet in history to bring about His own ends, and faith brings strength, while hate, faithlessness, delusion and feckless self-interest hasten our demise. We continue to hope, as generations of the faithful have throughout history. We pray that somehow— this time— the lessons will be remembered.

Choose to Love, -DA

*****

With all respect to the day, there is production news, as the Editress has finished her efforts on Daniel Sean Ritter’s concluding novel, his return to Bosnia in Sister’s Shadow. File formatting and final quality checks are ahead before a publication date will be announced, but I anticipate a release this month, God willing. Updates here ASAP.

You’re Going To Die

Being mortal, vulnerable and tentative taken as a whole consolidates into an unavoidable conclusion: you’re going to die. How does that make you feel? Feelings come first as they did in childhood, hopefully moderated in due time by adult intellect. Unfortunately, this ideal process seems to be less evident every day, as it’s sadly obvious many in this comfortable society have never reached rational maturity.

Fear. I’ve really no use for it. It could be that I had too much of it as a young man, or that with age fear loses its grip on so much of what it found to hold onto in youth. In any event, today is a time when fear is rampant: being instilled, leveraged, and exploited, and as a consequence spreading like a virus.

Souls susceptible to fear-mongering strategies have failed to embrace their essential mortality. Rather than our being made so for the sake of despair and terror, life’s beauty of fleeting fragility is a construct meant to draw us closer to our Creator, and begin to thread the bond of the personal relationship and resulting redemption that draws us home once His work in us is finished.

Fear is detrimental to the sort of adult reasoning that resolves a suboptimal situation. Panic, conversely, only prolongs the sort of wretched downslope we’re being forced to observed in the current news cycle. Having worked in government, I ‘ve at times had opportunities to observe what I once termed as Hands Above the Head Running About Behavior in people who really should have known better. People who feel a need to Do Something act because they perceive doing so is expected, and they embrace hurried decisions without taking time to consider a rational course of action. Lao Tzu wrote eighty-one chapters about such decisions, one precept in which is the wisdom, “If nothing is done, then all will be well.”

That, by the way, is how nature affords protection from a virus by using our immune systems rather than unnatural forced mass immunizations. Your opinion might vary, but as I see things, doing nothing beats the hell out of killing thousands of people and injuring many tens of thousands more with a vaccine no one ever needed, like the jab that was approved rubber stamped by the FDA this week. Good going, group think.

Certain emotions are incompatible with fear. Anger is one. The transition from fear to anger may be abrupt to the point of conferring a tactical advantage or managing a reversal, which is one great reason to avoid becoming addicted to inflicting terror on one’s designated victim group. This advice applies whether or not you brainstormed a sustainable sixty-billion-dollar pharmacological initiative because you became bored with counting the money you already had.

As a character of mine once observed, cowards can become ass-kickers if you enrage enough of them at the same time. (Feel-good bonus points to be awarded in the comments if you can name that novel). The time might be closer than any of us think.

Such consequences instruct. They teach the observant where life may be found, and warn observers from a distance. The hard lesson is that when a dearth of wisdom causes things to go south, sometimes not everyone walks away. Lost souls are the waste products of Creation in a universe where things can get real without warning. Depending on strategies of fear to keep your marks susceptible to manipulation is a plan without an exit strategy, because once you lose the power conferred by your victims’ fear, your scheme has run its course. The spirit of fear you leveraged in wickedness will turn on you then, revealing itself in the realization of the consequences you’ve brought down on yourself.

Love doesn’t engender fear. It nurtures the courage to do what one should in the face of trepidation. Courage is a learned response, one we have the duty to pass onto others once we grasp its nature and application. We are, in a sense, tomes in God’s lending library. Our Author and Finisher intends us to go forward with those who experience us from then on, whether it’s through a chance encounter, being a friend, parenting, producing a novel, or leading a country.

If you seek the deepest wisdom, fear only the judgment of a righteous God: an inevitability that no one can withstand without the spirit of Christ as an advocate. The provision He made can transform fear into joy and open the curtain between His realm and ours to the bright sunshine of unimaginable love waiting on the other side.

Time and again, one sees the admonition in Scripture: “Do not be afraid.” It’s a recognition of the spiritually myopic realm in which we are being raised up, and a recognition of the frailty of the creatures meant to one day become His eternal servants. Fear is indeed real and unavoidable here in our plane, and its antidote and antithesis is faith.

To pass out of this life into the presence of Christ is our great hope and continual motivation to keep going in a world of character-building challenges. Had He not appeared, hope would be more difficult to maintain, and today the dividing line between the faithful and unbelievers has never been more stark.

That being said, we are as I write this we are also fast approaching Rosh Hashanah, the appointed time in Judaism which Messianic scholars view in the timeline leading to His Millennial Kingdom as next up for fulfillment by Christ. Should He call His church out of the world as Paul hinted, this will be my last entry in Vae Obscurum. Ironic that I should write on the dangers of fearing death when some of us will, as Paul promised Thessalonica, “not all sleep.”

So, having said all that, what we’ve been told already by Jesus I’ll repeat: don’t be afraid. You might forget to live in the meantime.

Choose to love, -DA

*****

In production news, the Editress is approaching ninety percent completion in Ritter’s concluding novel and Sean’s File Book Six, Sister’s Shadow. The title might or might not precede the arrival of fall, God willing that it is published at all. Should Jesus tarry in this Rapture Season, not willing any should be lost, Daniel Sean Ritter’s return to Bosnia will be worth the wait, just as it is worth the work. Both, after all, are what the faithful do, “That Others May Live.”

Juneteenth

Yesterday, I watched the cogs of politics turn in a completely predictable fashion. Being a government worker in a capacity that’s none of your business, I was able to call the near future blow by blow. From the time I heard of Democrats pushing a new federal holiday through the legislative process to its inevitable result, I knew a day off for Juneteenth, filtering down through state and local governments in the course of a half afternoon, was on the way.

Disturbed by the number of Americans of African descent embracing ideological Americanism and rallying to the Trump presidency, the Democratic Party reverted to a pandering strategy having served them well for more than half a century. Then, they converted possession of a significant electoral demographic from Dr. King’s dream to the welfare state envisioned by Lyndon Johnson. A national holiday now commemorates what many celebrated already: the last vestige of Southern slavery ended by Federal troops in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1866.

It’s appropriate, even overdue, to have a Federal holiday celebrate the Republicans whose long efforts ended slavery. The Civil War was one of the most costly in our nation’s history, but being grounded in the present day and rejecting the notion of inherited grievance, the only reparations descendants of nineteenth-century veterans of that conflict demand is respect for the unifying principles and patriotism driving their forebears to the righteous fight.

Not that the slave-owning mindset ever truly disappeared; the primary lesson of history is that, while times may change, human nature does not, and so the compulsion to direct the lives of others survives in its most hideous forms. Slavery still exists in Islam, communism, and the cultivated dependence and intolerance of ideological diversity defining today’s Democratic Party. Please pardon any redundancy in those last examples.

Leave it to today’s Democratic Party to establish a national holiday that manages to divide the American people on racial grounds. Power is found in advancing the narrative of liberating the oppressed. It’s the height of irony that the posers responsible for pushing through another day off harbor in their intent every antithesis of freedom for those they seek to manage rather than serve.

Today’s Democratic Party, being exclusively concerned with accumulated power, operates outside the bounds of conscience, morality, or any other vestige of character reflected in the founding principles that gave birth to America. Yes, slavery was an institution at the time, and that Constitutional incongruity resolved within a lifetime to its righteous end with the issuance and enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation.

What happened next is historically incontrovertible. The Democratic Party fought against losing their power over the lives of black Americans for the next century, until the Great Society replaced urban family structure with checks mailed out by the government in proportion to a woman’s ability breed the voters of tomorrow. Young black men, reduced to sires of happenstance, now endeavor to kill each other at alarming rates. The hooded Klan of a century ago would have approved.

In March of this year, in an exchange with a colleague during a proceeding in the House, United States Representative Jerry Nadler let slip what should be evident to any interested observer: “God’s will is of no concern to this Congress.” Representing only his self interest, neither is anyone’s but Nadler’s own and those wielding the power of controlling alphas in his party structure.

Living without presumed accountability is part and parcel of their bubble … the deficient perspective the political Left has constructed in its collective mindset. Freedom, to those afflicted by self focus, beckons as the ability to fulfill desires without consequence on a path whose correction is more severe the longer it delays. Life teaches hard lessons so we (or distant observers) learn, remember, and carry on with increased chances for survival. Consequences of natural law, though, seem like oppression to the self absorbed. Bitterness results. Bitterness is an acid that corrodes from the inside out, and so a cycle of degradation is perpetuated that only valid faith can end.

Take faithful considerations—to your God, your county, your loved ones, your neighbors—out of consideration and the result is slavery, not freedom.

Today’s Democratic Party acts as Satan’s ministry in consistently seeking to co-opt any edifying aspect of government. Society is polarized now between chasing life and death, those orientations being the ones and zeroes in the engineering math of their Creator. The world has made offers of various material and fleshly sorts in exchange for Democrat souls, and in the denial of their essential existence they’ve bought into the deception of the enemy.

Stacey Abrams is even writing mommy porn now. Try wiping that image from your mind when you’re an author of substantive works.

Anyway …

The lessons of history, as I said previously, are there for the taking to harvest and nourish ideological wellness, and it’s no surprise when today’s corrupted and partisan public education system discounts them at every opportunity.

Respect for The Way Things Are includes the embrace of valid faith, the love of others to which we are encouraged, the admonition against enabling destructive behavior, and incorporating the sure hope that has endured through the Age of the Church. It is not for nothing that Christ revealed Himself to us in an era where Roman historians could document His actuality.

The fictional ages of Tolkien’s Middle Earth began and ended with momentous events resulting in a new referential paradigm. So it will be with our own.

In Christ, God chose to demonstrate His love prior to the coming days when He will again assert His authority. In this time of waiting before the whole world is judged, we pass to righteous judgment one at a time whether we are mindful of such inevitability or not.

Cast your wishes, set your goals, work to your best ability, and then live in the world as it is. To do otherwise is to fall prey to the nets of those who put their best interest above your own. Being deceived to eternal consequences for the rebellious amusement of God’s enemy is the most degrading and tragic servitude of all. You have His promise that your days are not for nothing.

Choose to love, -DA

*****

In production news, the Editress is somewhat more than one-third through her various processes in Ritter’s final novel, featuring his return to Bosnia-Herzegovina in Sister’s Shadow. We continue to expect his sixth title and conclusion of Sean’s File to appear at the end of summer. As always, you’re sure to hear about it first right here.

In the meantime, we’re in the midst of the annual Summer Doldrums, so far as book sales go. There are three free titles linked in various outlets on the sidebar. You might even want to continue the story with paid titles that follow.

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