At this writing, it is January 13, 2019.
So to many of you...welcome back as you return yourself to your regularly scheduled programming.
Yesterday, January 12 was Quitter's Day.
I can't testify, one way or the other, as to whether or not Hallmark has a card section available for noting the occasion and the observance doesn't yet appear on any printed calendars I've come across, but experts in the field are confident that Quitter's Day is very real and very much a part of the lives of millions and millions and millions of us.
For January 12 is, according to extensive research, study, analysis and a veritable Wal Mart discount bins worth of pie charts and bar graphs, the day when 8 out of ten people who hunkered down, dug in and bigly participated in resolution making on January 1st, lighten up, dig back out and say what is more likely a fonder farewell to that resolution than the farewell they bid the old year that inspired the resolution in the first place.
If Taylor Swift were inclined to cash in, the lyrical addition to an earlier hit would very likely include the observation that "smokers gotta/ smoke smoke smoke smoke smoke / and eaters gotta/ eat eat eat eat eat / and treadmills need to....well, treadmills need to be returned to the task for which God created them.
A very expensive, capable of motion surface on which to stack laundry baskets and assorted other household this and that that apparently have no other particular place to go.
Actually, the date, January 12, is not, technically, Quitter's Day. The aforementioned super stack of pie charts and bar graphs indicate that it is, in fact, the second Friday every January when the passionate commitment to giving up things ends up actually being the thing being given up. So, the official day floats around, as it were. Kind of like a lot of those holidays "observed" that Federal, state and local governments are so fond of, you know, where the actual commemorative day lands on one date or another, but, conveniently, even brilliantly, if you think about the strategy at work, a day or even two on either side of the day can be "value added" so a one day off from work becomes a four to five day festival, a workplace "--palooza", so to speak.
Makes you wonder why everyone is in such a snit about the government shutdown. Being shut down for four or five days at a time happens so often nowadays, you'd think everyone would be used to it.
Of course, one key difference might be that the paychecks don't stop showing up during "Columbusdaypalooza" or "Arbordaypalooza" and just shy of a million people can't buy food or medicine while the ongoing, no end in sight variety of shutdown continues. Luckily, though, there's help on the way because we have a President and a Congress who put the needs of Americans, all Americans, first at all times, always ready to set aside their own differences and come together to do what they were elected, which is, of course, to serve the needs of Americans, all Americans, no matter what they.......
yeah...I know. Satirical sprinkled with sarcasm is just one of those things I don't always have a lot of control over.
I've made more than one New Year's Resolution to stop doing that.
Never made it past the second Friday in January.
Bad habits die hard. Which is, of course, actually an adaptation of the more common "old" habits die hard.
Bad or old, either way or both, breaking free of the inclination to do that which we shouldn't oughta be doin' is always much more easily said than done.
Cause it's so easy to fall in love / it's so easy to fall in love, but giving up the smokes or the sugar or the super sizing at the drive thru?
It ain't no piece of cake. Yeah, satirical, sprinkled with sarcasm and the occasional pinch of ironic. I know. I need to work on that. Too late for this year, what with it being January 13 and all, but still.
It's hard to not be a smoker if you're a smoker.
It's hard to not be an over-eater if you're an over-eater.
Something else it's hard not to be.
And gettin' harder and harder all the time.
Stand by for that.
Christina Forrester is the director of Christian Democrats of America. Whatever else she's got going on, I always appreciate any organization that has the savvy to save me a lot of time explaining what they do by spelling it all out in the name of their organization.
Forrester published an online piece in which the title of the piece also pretty much spells out her point and her perspective on it.
"In Trump, Many Have Found Their Justification For Hate".
Here's her perspective.
I hear it every day, from people who have lost relationships with loved ones over the past two years:
“I never would have suspected she was capable of such a merciless attitude!” “I did not know my uncle/cousin/aunt/brother was a racist,” “I had no idea my pastor cared more about his politics than preaching the Gospel of Christ. I don’t even recognize my church friends anymore.” These are the stories being told from church-goers across the country; everyday Americans who no longer recognize those who were once close family and friends. The toxicity in the country — the hate, fear-mongering and propaganda — has revealed the character, underlying attitudes and prejudices of many. This is something that has split up families, churches, and broken long-term relationships. So my question is: Was this always in their hearts? Was it always there, beneath the surface, and it only took an opportune justification, which has come in the form of a red MAGA hat, for them to reveal it, without apology?
I continue to ask myself this question every time I hear another of these stories from people who reach out to me, or see it manifested in my own circle. It is shocking when a person who you always knew as a person of compassion and a good heart comments on a picture of a child who is crying and afraid, “They are illegal.” Or when someone who you know loves their family says to you, “Well, it is sad that children have died, but that is their parents’ fault and that’s why we need a wall.” And then it is heart-breaking when that person you have known so many years, who loves God and goes to church every Sunday, who you have shared potluck dinners and worshiped with, suddenly shares a meme comparing Mexicans to cockroaches who should be “exterminated” by their hero, Trump.
When Steve King came out Thursday morning with a statement questioning why “White Supremacy” was an offensive term, it was something that, prior to 2015, would have rocked the political and social media world. To accept the idea of even questioning White Supremacy would be taboo, would be political suicide and obviously not socially acceptable. But if you needed any evidence of the desensitization to hatred, bigotry and good ole’ fashion racism, just look to this example: no outcry from the good people who love God and country. No memes denouncing White Supremacy – just silence. Complicity. But it is not surprising that people who would sit in silence as children are held in cages, abused and die in the hands of our Border Patrol, would also sit in silence about a “little” thing called White Supremacy.
Many times, attitudes of the heart are revealed when there is an available justification – a mob mentality sits in that reaches across hearts and minds in an invisible thread. With every racist, homophobic, chauvinist or xenophobic remark, the eyes glance around the room, “Are you OK with this? Will you speak out now? OK, then I am OK too.” And the justification continues with each blow. And the desensitization grows…and grows.
Shane Claiborne, meanwhile, is a Christian activist and author. He published a piece last year subtitled "the deadly theology of white supremacy."
Here's a short, spot-on excerpt.
The hatred is bad enough. There’s something even more insidious when religion is used to camouflage hatred. Some of the white supremacists even wear crosses, and carry crosses, and have cross tattoos.
Just as the cross has inspired millions of Christians to stand up for life, to fight for freedom and to come alongside victims of oppression, there have also been times when the cross has been twisted.
And a twisted cross becomes a swastika.
A symbol of love can become a weapon. The icon of redemption can become an instrument of terror.
The title of Claiborne's piece puts a little poetry to the pillory.
"Twisting The Cross."
The case is correctly made that, give or take the addition of things like social media, 24/7 news cycles and/or other technologies that modernize the madness, there's nothing new going on in the year of our Lord 2019 what hasn't gone on, in one place or another, even here in the tried and true, red, white and blue of these here United States of America, in any number of given years of our Lord.
There are, though, some other distinctions involved that, if not making 2019 America new, most certainly make 2019 America different.
First, for the first time in known history, a demagogue has actually made it all the way to the Oval Office.
And, cleansing breath, keepers of the flame, that's not simply a pot shot. It's a factual observation based solely on the dictionary definition of the word.
"A political leader who seeks support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument."
Trump not only qualifies in an honest and fair evaluation. He may be the most accomplished demagogue in the history of the club. Hell, he very likely could be elected president of the club.
Prejudice. Desire. Fear. The tippy top three of the voodoo that Donald do so well.
In the tradition of the most gifted of history's demagogues, he has parlayed, and continues to parlay, those prejudices, desires and fears into fervent, feverish support,
The list is long. And time is precious. So let's just hit the current bigl-est of the bigly causes he is championing.
America is in the midst of being invaded by swarms and/or hoardes of one other than Caucasian skin color or another and the only chance America has of surviving the assault is a wall.
And if some children have to be taken from their parents. Or if some children have to die. Well, that's the price they pay for trying to come into our proud, patriotic nation without doing it exactly by the rules. And let's not have any of that libtard snowflake whiny bullshit about them fleeing from persecution or abuse or starvation. Rules are rules. And they either do things by the rules or they are not allowed to play at all. Besides, a lot of them, you know, actually, probably most of them, you know...that cockroach thing.
If where they come from is a land of persecution and abuse and starvation, that's their problem. Not ours. We can't even take care of our own. We don't have the time or money or one percent's worth of give a shit about taking care of them......
....say the native born proud patriots who call this great country their home, with their flags flying high and their red caps firmly in place.
Playing by the rules. Obeying the laws.
Texting their friends, one hand on the steering wheel, that they're just minutes away....as they tailgate each other at eighty miles an hour....weaving in and out of lanes because they're going to be late....for church.
Where they will praise and worship their Savior, born of a carpenter and his wife, who had to escape persecution by going to another country without playing by......
Oh, you know the rest.
That same Savior mentioned in Galatians 6:2.
"Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ"
The second Friday every January is Quitter's Day.
And it's understandable that a commitment, a resolution, made in good faith with the best of intentions can only survive a dozen or so days out of three hundred and sixty five.
It's hard to not be a smoker if you're a smoker.
It's hard to not be an over-eater if you're an over-eater.
But those pale next to what is, now more obviously than ever, one of the most excruciatingly difficult habits to break.
It's apparently next to impossible to not be a hypocrite.
If you're a hypocrite.
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