The Monster

ASSAD, OBAMA, ISLAMISM

The Fox News interview with Bashar al-Assad was fascinating.  Assad is confident, intelligent, well-spoken, and speaks English with a French accent.  He listened carefully to the questions from Palkot and Kucinich, which were typically leading and insinuating, but refused to be boxed in by them.  His points about democracy, culture, and national sovereignty were apt, clear, and corrective of the interviewers' American line.

Assad understands Obama better than the American people do.  He knows that Obama's policy of alignment with the Islamic Brotherhood is couched in pro-democracy propaganda.  He knows that Obama and his state department deftly equate democracy with freedom in the public mind, and that the Islamists use the language of democracy to conceal their struggle to force Sharia law on a global scale.  Obama and the Democrats have re-aligned American foreign policy in support of Islamist absolutism, and most Americans don't get it.

Americans need to realize that democracy doesn't necessarily mean freedom.  Indeed, it can be misused as an entree to the absolutism Obama says he abhors.  Using democracy to install despotism is politically perverse and retrograde.

Krauthammer calls Assad a liar.  I don't know whether he is or not.  I know that Obama is a liar.  Assad is intelligent, articulate, and compelling.  It was good to see what Obama and the Democrats want to blow away with their bombs, before they do it.  Now I know what they're trying to hide.

If Assad is a monster, as the press is fond of repeating, what is Obama?  Oh, I forgot, he's the darling of the liberal/left American media, and an Islamist ally.

The Better Part

LOVE, SEX, SOLITUDE

Love matters to me, but I can't control it, except as a quality of thought and action embodied by my own frail character and offered freely to the world.  It would be a great privilege and blessing to share my life and work with a lover.  But, I don't have a lover.  I never have had a lover.  I don't know how to get a lover.  It is not a question of sexual preference for me, and I would embrace either a male or a female.  It's about the quality of affection, not the gender.  I am sexually predisposed to males, but that is a natural accident, not a divine decree.  I can choose whether or not to indulge my sexual predilection for males, and the extent to which I want to indulge it.

But, none of this sexual parsing has anything to do with romance.  What about love?  What about romance?  Is it denied to some poor souls, like me?  And, what do we poor, lonely souls do to fill the void?  How does one make a virtue out of loneliness and solitude?  By doing something good.  What?  Whatever you like.  Choose something healthy.  Choose a way of life that fulfills you.  What to choose?  That's an important question.  Does casual sex have a place in the dispositions of a lonely soul?  Should it?  Is abstinence a virtue?  How is it achieved?  Abstinence must be a balance between fulfillment and the determination to refrain from problematic behavior.  Nancy Reagan was right.  Sometimes the right choice boils down to just saying, no.  It doesn't have to be an argument, the consequence of ideal circumstances, or politically correct.  It's simply a matter of choosing the better part of life's imperfect alternatives.  What will you choose?

True Love

 STARBUCKS, PAIN D'AVIGNON, BLONDE BEAST

Love is such a problem.  How can I live for love when I can't control it?  Unless I take the universal, spiritual approach of loving rather than being loved.  It is much easier and more accessible to love than it is to be loved.  I don't need your permission to love you, I just need to do it.  However, I have to do or be or say something to earn or win your love.  I have to work hard to draw feelings of affection and attachment from you.  Feelings that are so hard won and so soon lost to time and changing circumstances.  How can I make you love me?  How can I get your attention?  I have to get you to notice me first, and then I have to be or do something that will delight you and make you want to know and be and communicate with me.

Looks are an important part of it.  Not the most important part, but it all begins with what catches the eye.  Someone catches my eye and I hope to make contact.  I want to meet him.  I want to find an excuse to talk to him—any stupid, little reason to talk to him.  "You dropped your Starbucks card."  "Could you pass the half-and half?"  Sometimes just making that momentary contact is enough.  Sometimes it has to be, because he doesn't want any more to do with me than that.  Which is fine.  I learned long ago that one of life's greatest pleasures, one of its graces, is to leave other people alone.  But, how many times have I seen a guy that I wanted to get to know?  Usually an excruciatingly handsome and attractive guy.  And I know nothing about him.  Nothing.  Only that he catches my eye.  And I'm so proud of myself for not trying to glom onto him.  I'm so proud that I didn't make a fool of myself by presuming to greet him or make conversation with him.  I'm not a stalker, and I proved it!  I'm so proud.

There was a handsome, trim, blonde tradesman I used to see at Starbucks.  He had a habit of turning his ankle while waiting for his coffee, an unconscious gesture carried over from childhood.  I saw him almost daily.  He was one of the best parts of my day.  Never in a million years would I ever have a reason to talk to this guy, nor would I go out of my way to find one.  It was enough just to see him, waiting for his coffee and turning his ankle.  And then I didn't see him.  I started going to Pain D'Avignon for morning coffee, and on my less frequent visits to Starbucks I didn't see my handsome friend.  I missed him.  I wondered if he was going somewhere else for coffee.  The tradesmen tend to go somewhere convenient to their current job.  One sees the same people day after day for months at Starbucks, and then the job changes and they're gone.

One recent morning at Pain D'Avignon, I saw the familiar build and coloring of my blonde beast out of the corner of my eye.  I wasn't sure until I saw him turn his ankle while he waited for his coffee.  O damn, it was him.  And there we were thrown together again.  Did he recognize me?  I doubt it.  But, I was happy to see him.

Pedestrian Uncertainty

PENN STATE, WRITING, MGIS

I've learned so much from Penn State.  I love Penn State.  But, I've also learned that I don't want to neglect writing anymore.  Even if I were to pursue more education, I would not want to neglect writing the way I did for my master's degree.  If I had done things differently, writing might have supported my master's experience.  But, I was so absorbed in what I was learning, and in the process, and in my desire to excel, that I allowed myself to neglect it.  I don't regret doing that.  I don't regret my devotion to the master's degree and Penn State experience.  It has been one of the highlights of my life.  I'm just reflecting on it, now that I'm close to the end.  And I don't know what will happen next.  I don't know what I will do next.  Writing has come to my rescue, helping me to cope with the transition back to normal life and pedestrian uncertainty.

New World Order

POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY

"Vengeance is mine," saith Obama.

Romans 12:  19.  Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

Muslim Liberation Politics

CUCKOO, COLLECTIVISM, REVEREND WRIGHT

The Muslim Brotherhood is to Islam what liberation theology is to Catholicism.  It is a collectivist political movement with religious trappings, much like Obama's Trinity United Church in Chicago.  Obama wants to go to war against the enemies of collectivism in Syria.  Otherwise, he wouldn't be interested in punishing Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons.

There's something gruesome and unseemly about people like Kerry and Obama posing as self-righteous, indignant war-mongers.  Obama has set himself up as a global moral arbiter, ready to punish whoever defies his authority with rough justice.  And as usual, the Democrats drag out "the children" to justify whatever crazy, despotic thing it is they want to do.  How far are they willing to go?  Maybe they'll start caning people for spitting on the sidewalk, like they do in Singapore.  Or, if Kerry and Obama have their way, they'll just shoot them on sight, no questions asked.  Cloud cuckoo land is alive and well in Amerika.

Morally Obtuse

OBTUSE, ISLAMIST, COSMOLOGY

In the puerile, liberal cosmology, morality is the emotional attachment to one's friends and the ruthless destruction of one's enemies.  Not to understand or agree with this ethic is to be "morally obtuse."  Obama, Kerry, and MSNBC are emotionally attached to the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Alawite Assad is fighting a war against the Islamist Brotherhood and liberals want to punish him for attacking their friends.  The indignation over chemical weapons, whether or not they were actually used, is a liberal ruse to get the United States involved in a quarrel between Muslim cultures.  Obama, Kerry, and MSNBC need a deus ex machina to enter the fray, punish Assad, and champion the Islamist cause.  Enter the United States.

Obama's Hardon

OBAMA, KERRY, ALAWITES

Just because Obama and Kerry have hardons for the Muslim Brotherhood is no reason for Americans to join in their fight against the Alawites.  Obama wants to redefine America's strategic interests in the Middle East to promote Islamist culture and political power "by any means necessary."  That is what he and Eric Holder are already doing in the United States.  Why are Democrat politicians always at pains to prove that they are not pacifists?  Like being a pacifist is worse than being a traitor to one's own country, culture, and political system.  Liberals always use the pacifists for their own subversive, political ends.  They never hesitate to take the pacifist line if it will help them to destroy the opposition and take power.  But, power and money is what it's all about for them.  Liberals aren't morally opposed to anything.  Like the old-fashioned communists, they will do whatever it takes to get power and enslave the masses to serve their interests.