Alienation

While I enjoyed this show, this is not the alienation I have in mind.I never really understood the term in college. Maybe because I was not alienated. But sitting here in a food court of a troubled mall with lots of vacancies I get it. We humans want to belong, and we will put up with a lot to belong. 

What is alienation? 

al·ien·a·tion ˌālyəˈnāSH(ə)n/

noun

1. the state or experience of being isolated from a group or an activity to which one should belong or in which one should be involved."unemployment may generate a sense of political alienation"
   1.  
      • loss or lack of sympathy; estrangement."public alienation from bureaucracy"
      • (in Marxist theory) a condition of workers in a capitalist economy, resulting from a lack of identity with the products of their labor and a sense of being controlled or exploited.
   2. 
      
      

synonyms:

isolation, detachment, estrangement, distance, separation, division; More

So why do I feel alienated?

 
It is difficult to feel a connection of belonging when people act so oddly and say such strange things. I left one church last year because of this. How could I belong to a church where a pastor randomly burst into tears for no apparent reason and asked people to come forward so they could too? 
 
I would have just written it off, but I knew the "backstory" behind it. The leadership was speaking in tongues and other similar Pentecostal nonsense. They were not letting it into services, but occasionally they slipped. Or maybe it was a "trial balloon" that never got off the ground. In any event I was not sure what was more disturbing, the under current of Pentecostalism or the fact they felt they had to hide it. Sure I want to belong, but not at the expense of checking my brain at the door of the church. 
 
Checking your brain at the door is exactly what many churches want. If you get a funny look on your face that says, "That makes no sense," or worse yet you say it, you may be allowed to continue to attend, but you won't be welcomed. And "belonging"? Don't even think about it.  
 
To continue with the metaphor of checking your brain at the door like it was your hat or coat, there is a real risk if you do so. You may forget to retrieve it when you leave! What I mean by this is that if you don't use your brain you will forget how to use it. Then when a evil Jedi Pastor tells you that these are not the droids you are looking for you believe it. 
 
This is why I keep talking about templates, or world views, or whatever you wish to call it. The people at my former church had a Pentecostal template through which they looked at everything. They are very fine people, among the best I have ever met, but because of faulty thinking and faulty theology I cannot go to their church unless I have a frontal lobotomy. 
 
No thanks. 

Who Do You Think You Are?

I have decided to start up the health series I started before my blog's hiatus. Here is the first blog post in that series. I will repost these every week until I get to where I left off. 

As I begin to blog weekly on health related matters, I thought I would answer this rather obvious question. 

I have no letters after my name–well, technically I supposed I could add B.A. But no, this does not mean that I am going to disparage those that do have these letters. I have seen way too much of that in the religious circles I travel in. I am just a fat person (that is actually more polite than the word I should use, obese) who spent decades trying various methods to lose weight that did not work. I will share some of my failures over the next year that I plan to blog about health, hopefully every Friday. 

Who am I then? 

I am just an average person who has finally gotten a better handle on his weight problem. Am I now ready to be a Men's Fitness model? Er, no. I am still in the overweight category. I actually do not particularly care that I am overweight, as we will see there is evidence that being slightly overweight means you will live longer. What I do care about will be evident over the next year. I want to eat a healthy diet and have a healthy lifestyle, and "let the chips fall where they may"—hopefully they will fall in the trash where they belong.  I am confident that eating a healthy diet will mean a lower weight, but even if it doesn't, I know I am on the right track. 

Since my failures have taught me that sudden radical change does not work (at least for me), I will, after a few introductory posts, give each of you 52 steps over 52 weeks that you can take to improve your health and life. 

I invite you to take one step a week with me as we walk together toward better health. 

Movin' On Up?

A Russian multi-use building on the Moscow river. I doubt I can afford. From an American perspective, apart from Moscow and other large cities, housing is cheap in Russia. While we were in Murom we looked at a very nice apartment. It was a spacious two-story four-bedroom apartment--you might even call it a penthouse as it was the top two floors of a five story building. It had all the modern appliances included. There was a spot for a sauna, but that was extra. Utilities, except for phone but including cable TV, are about $200 a month. Reasonable internet speed is cheap. The cost for this deluxe apartment in the skies? The day we looked it was $95,000. Before we left Russia the price had dropped, in dollars, to $89,000. Right now it is $92,000. In a suburb close to Moscow one can get an apartment with two bedrooms for that price, still relatively cheap. Since my guess is that the Ruble is trending lower, it will only get cheaper. 

So if we decide to move to Russia, housing will not be an issue, not even if we live in a big city.

In a sense if we move we are "moving on up."

His Race is Just a Coincidence I Am Sure

Why would any policeman ever do this? 

If Trump or Sanders is Elected I Am Probably Leaving the US

Why do I feel this way? 

Each candidate has said stupid things. Here is Trump:

“I would knock out the source of their wealth, the primary sources of their wealth, which is oil,” he told MSNBC. “And in order to do that, you would have to put boots on the ground. I would knock the hell out of them, but I’d put a ring around it and I’d take the oil for our country.” 

This is nothing new for Trump.

Trump:George, let me explain something to you. We go into Iraq. We have spent thus far, $1.5 trillion. We could have rebuilt half of the United States. $1.5 trillion. And we’re going to then leave. So, in the old days, you know when you had a war, to the victor belong the spoils. You go in. You win the war and you take it. … Stephanopoulos: It would take hundreds of thousands of troops to secure the oil fields.

Trump: Excuse me. No, it wouldn’t at all. … Stephanopoulos: So, we steal an oil field?

Trump: Excuse me. You’re not stealing. Excuse me. You’re not stealing anything. You’re taking-- we’re reimbursing ourselves-- at least, at a minimum, and I say more. We’re taking back $1.5 trillion to reimburse ourselves.

So the US declares war on a country, and then to pay for the war it caused it steals from the people that live there. Brilliant. On one level you have to admire the chutzpah of the man. This is actually what the US has done for a long time. At least he admits it, and by doing it in public view it will enable a President Trump to steal more than usual. I guess one has to admire an honest thief. 

While Stephanopolis exaggerates the number of troops needed, it will be large. But hey, who cares–the oil will pay for it. Madeline Albright, former Secretary of State for President Clinton, admitted that the sanction policies of the US she oversaw had killed 600,000, mainly children and the elderly, in Iraq. This was before the war in Iraq even started. I doubt it was actually that large. But at least 1 million Iraqis have died as a direct results of the actions of the US. My guess is that it is much more. They do not hate us because of our freedoms, they hate us because the US has murdered millions of people in the Arab world. 

I have this gut feeling that actually Trump does not want to do this, and this is him posturing for votes. But either way this makes him unfit to be president.

 

Bernie Sanders is an interesting case. He says he is a socialist. To a progressive type that sounds, well it sounds so progressive. What is socialism? Merriam Webster tell us: 

a way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies.

What this means is that most land and business will be owned by the government. Farming is a major industry after all. Everyone, the vast majority anyway, would be employed by the government. 

Once again I have this gut feeling that Sanders is not serious about this, and that he says he is  a socialist because it is cutesy and trendy, and so Starbucks. But if he is serious, then the result would be catastrophic. If he is not serious, then he is also saying something he knows is false to get votes. Another option is that Sanders is too dumb to know what socialism is. Either way he is unfit for office. 

How would I describe all modern politicians including Sanders and Trump? Fascist. While this is my definition, fascism is a way of organizing a society in which major industries are privately owned but controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies. This describes America today.  It describes most countries. While a progressive might say that the elites control the governments, I feel that this is a distinction without a difference. 

So am I serious when I say that "If Trump or Sanders is Elected I Am Probably Leaving the US"? Absolutely. But then again I am probably leaving if they don't get elected. 

Oh well, time to get back to my Russian on Rosetta Stone. I am learning boy/boys, girl/girls, he/she, man/men, woman/women who eat/drink/read/run/write. Wish me luck, as a case-based language Russian is difficult.