dazed & confused

 

I have been pretty silent lately regarding my usual raison d'etre of faith, politics and social justice.  The main reason for that is that I really haven’t had anything of substance to add to the conversation that hasn’t already been spoken of.  Moreover, the things I have been seeing are all the same, too – “The View blows up JD Vance” or “Pam Bondi self-destructs during hearing” and other tripe.  (Have you noticed that absolutely nothing has happened to any of these people?) 

 Another reason I haven’t written much is because a lot of it is just to tragic for me to think about and act upon.  I still can’t see a picture of Renee Good or Alex Pretti without becoming inconsolable, and no one wants to read my snotty-faced, overly emotional rants that will inevitably come out.  I am aware of the eye-rolling that comes my way when I do that.

 Most  of what we’ve been witnessing has been pretty much Boolean in reaction- either you’re automatically for it or completely against it.  So, I’m gonna spare everyone from any of that, and bring up a topic that I’m actually having trouble deciding what to think.

 This new conflict with Iran is what I’m talking about.  Now, I’m plenty old enough to remember the abdication of the Shah of Iran in 1978, his exile to Egypt and the American hostage crisis of 1979-80 and the 444 days of constant news about it.  For the last 47 years, the US relationship with Iran has been tenuous at best, and we’ve witnessed their terror-state in the forms of Hezbollah and Hamas, thousands of Iranians being put to death for anti-Sharia actions or demonstrations, etc., etc.  (BTW- don’t say “sharia law” – “sharia” is the Arabic word for “law”)  I have more than a few Persian friends, and they are none to keen on Khomeini, and most of these friends of mine have fled the persecution that they were suffering.  So it seems that going after this regime might have some validity from a human rights standpoint.  (Now, before you start ranting at me about this, please let me continue my explanation of the problem- it’s not what you think….)

 But there’s a significant number of problems with this argument.  Let’s get one thing out of the way right now- Trump’s lack of informing Congress is a null and void argument.  Remember- Nixon, Carter Reagan, George H.W., Clinton, George W. and Barack Obama all had military interdictions without consulting Congress, so Trump already has precedent for doing this.  That is nothing new, and all the chest beating in the world isn’t going to change that.  Is Trump doing this as a distraction from the Trump-Epstein files?  Yeah, I think that’s part of it.  Is Trump after the oil in Iran?  Probably.  Is he trying to fix the economy by starting a war? (That is a tried & true technique to jump-starting the economy) Yep, more than likely.  But none of that is my problem.  My problem goes much, much deeper than that.

 I keep hearing about the “sacrifice” being made by our patriots in uniform.  I am NOT denigrating US service members when I say this, but they aren’t sacrificing anything.  The are being SACRIFICED, and that’s a tremendous difference.  I don't like the idea of our boys and girls going over there and dying for someone's ego. Yes, I believe that the leadership of Iran were bad, bad men- and I admit that something did need to be done about that, but there’s an even more fundamental problem here, and I haven’t seen anyone bring this up.

 To put it shortly, we all know full well that our current administration lies unrepentantly.  I mean that it’s absolute that when Trump opens his mouth about anything, he lies.  So do his cronies.  His cronies also lie to each other and to him.  It’s constant, and as such, this conflict is no more a distraction than any other of the myriads of false and non-truths that are out there.  They control the whole narrative.

 Now follow me- what if everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – that the government has been telling us nothing but lies about the state of worldwide affairs?  Now there are some that will start yelling at me, “OF COURSE THEY ARE, MILLER!!  STOP THE RECTAL CRANIAL INVERSION ON YOUR PART AND GROW UP!!!” – I still don’t think you understand.  Note that I didn’t say “maybe the Republicans”- I mean all of them.  Is it possible that we have all been so brain-washed that we really don’t know what’s going on at all? 

Now, I know some are thinking that I’m proposing a gigantic conspiracy theory here, and I sound like I need to take a little more medication (or maybe less……) but the simple truth of the matter is that if you’re truly honest with yourself, you just don’t know.  I know I don’t.  I don’t know if I’m over reacting or not, but with an administration that you know lies constantly, you just can’t be so sure.  EVERYTHING is so polarizing these days, and everything becomes political, even when it’s not.  Permit me an interesting example here:

 A lot of people probably don’t know who John Piper is.  He is an old-school conservative theologian and ardent Calvinist. (FWIW- I am not a fan)  He’s been around since the 1970’s, but he’s taken to posting Bible verses all over Twitter/X.  They are usually kind of non-sequitur in nature, and the other day, he posted this:

 Mr. Piper did not give an application/topical context for this post.  That’s all he said.  The response from the MAGA folks was swift, to say the least.  Here’s Sean Feught, the guy who has been leading worship services in the White House (and he’s a certifiable nut-bag) :

Now, I could care less that Mr. Feucht is having a problem with John Piper, but Feucht was far from the only one who went there.  And remember- these people are the ones who say we must obey the whole Word of God, but oh, no……..not this. 

Before I tangent off on that topic (and, oh boy- I could….) in addition to a whole lot of other things, this reaction speaks volumes about how a lot of these falsehoods start and how they are perpetuated.  John Piper is now “woke” and he’ll never shake that off, and I’ll be you dollars to donuts that it’s going to come out that Piper was always woke and he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing or some bullshit like that…….it does make one wonder about how terrible Iran’s leadership actually was, or…….and now we’ve opened a big can of worms.  And before you say that with discernment, you can figure out what’s real and what isn’t, you can’t possibly know that if you have no actual facts with which to balance that discernment.

Oh, I could go on and on.  And then there’s inevitable question of “well, what do we do about it?”  All I know is that since critical thinking is no longer a thing, it’s gonna be harder and harder to know.  I think the only thing we can really do is stop forming snap judgements on any topic and slow the responses down.  Kinda like using running plays in football to control the clock.  And before you say, “you’re crazy, Miller” or, “I can’t understand what the big deal is” consider the idea that we are all – left, right, center – being taken for a predetermined ride based on spoon-feedings of actual proof with a huge helping of hyperbolic bullshit.