It's a Hard Knocked Moral Life Thing

Dear America,

this blog just might come in stages...levels, if you will...possibly eight.

it might come in one fell swoop, but then again, it might not.

and doncha just love the creative license at play, and surely, at fault.

This is what happens, you see, when multiple dimensions -- most likely eight -- come at me all at once.

There is just so much to say...

from the everyday and nameless cynics to the Book of Job, that's how it all begins for me, G, in this new day...

from there, from the mindset of organizers and radicals to the consciousness of revolutionaries and freedom fighters -- from the absence of light to the deliverance of evil -- from the very essence of how power tends to corrupt to the evolution of absolute power corrupts absolutely -- from the self interests of the common good to self interests of the common not so good.

It's all right here at the tip of my tongue.

How ironic that Saul Alinsky handpicked the Bible verse, "The life of man upon earth is a warfare..." [Job 7:1] to set forth the premise of his entire work, a "pragmatic primer for realistic radicals."

For Alinsky could have chosen anything he so pleased.

But he chose this... 
making it a bullet point, no less, to stand out -- for emphasis -- in order to capture the fullness of his lament (that being Alinsky's, not Job's) and organize his thoughts into that one thing.

To characterize Alinsky quickly and without pomp and circumstance, he's the epitome of a true American cynic.  End of story.   Narrowing the perspective even further:  reading what ultimately becomes the operation's manual for the up and coming progressives of the last fifty years, Rules for Radicals, the task grows into something insufferable, weighted down by a constant stream of whining. 

It's heavy.
Jaded.
Dropping even a few F-bombs along the way, remaining true to the story -- which had to be revolutionary for it's day, no?    Alinsky was cool like that.

What is a cynic anyway?

To the standard, everyday understanding:   "a person who believes all men are motivated by selfishness."  

And that is all well and good; and yet, searching it's origins revealing a certain caveat, then we discover another view, "a member of a sect, founded by Antisthenes of Athens, of ancient Greek philosophers who believed virtue to be the only good and self-control to be the only means of achieving virtue."

 Returning to the Book of Job, it begins with this focus on how hard life is, the suffering that seems too great, too much to handle -- that all life is, and ever will be, can be summed up to being  a hard service, like that of a hired man, and synonymous with war itself.

Alinsky LEADS with this one idea and continues to lead the education of an organizer with a plethora of tips and tactics capitalizing on a theme -- the struggle to gain control (absolute power). 

Revealing the importance of making the moral justification and citing,  "all great leaders, including Churchill, Gandhi, Lincoln, and Jefferson, always invoked 'moral principles' to cover naked self-interest in the clothing of 'freedom' 'equality of mankind' 'a law higher than man-made law' and so on."  Alinsky doubles down, saying, "all effective actions require the passport of morality."  Once a cynic always a cynic.


So it's funny, isn't it?

For just how does Alinsky begin but by channeling Job, invoking God into the discussion right from the start.   Linking to the deeper, moral argument in hopes of making his argument not only legitimate, but worthy of attention and worth fighting for no matter the costs, the suffering, the labor, the hard service to something greater than...  It's on behalf of the common good, of course!

Prompted by Job posing the basic question,  why do the righteous suffer if God is so loving and all-powerful -- Alinsky capitalizes and profits in the making of a movement, as if asking, why do the people suffer at the hands of the establishment, if not also by God, all over again.

Attaining a wee bit of deep background via my handy-dandy Nelson's Bible handbook, we discover that "suffering itself is not the central theme; rather, the focus is on what Job learns from his suffering -- the sovereignty of God over all creation."  In the end, Job sees the light and repents and no longer demands answers from God as to why; in the end, Job realizes how great God is, and becomes humbled by his own humanity under God.

Oh if things could be so simple.

What have we learned?

The thing is, what began as a movement complete with rules for radicals et.al. and everything -- and quite possibly whittled down to eight levels of control to create social change -- has evolved.

And some may even say, the rules have changed; they had to change in order to facilitate the simple truth that "radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel a road not of their choosing...radicals must have a degree of control over the flow of events."

And come to think of it, we might as well begin concocting the Eight Stages for Fundamental Transformation BY President Barack Obama right now.

wait a minute...

we did that...

for it's all the same thing.

• Control healthcare, nationalize it even (and sign up by March 31st! or not);
• increase the poverty level...they won't fight back if the nanny state is providing everything for them;
• increase the national debt, by 10 trillion dollars before the end of eight years in office -- then increase taxes because it's morally the right thing to do;
• make it impossible to own a gun, or get the ammo for your gun, that way the people can no longer defend themselves and grow to depend upon the police state to control everybody;
• elevate the welfare rolls to levels unseen... just give people the fish... the roof over their head, the cell phone, unemployment, food stamps, ...;
• take control over news rooms, planting government spies and propaganda... implement government controls over education material... and basically indoctrinate the people from birth;
• remove the belief in Divine Providence and foundation under God, allow the atheists to usurp religious rights and the free exercise thereof;
• divide and conquer -- create conflict between the have's and the have-nots -- make the moral case for income redistribution...and while we're at it, let's polarize our cultural traditions and cornerstones.

Ah indeed,
as Alinsky declares war, in peaceful celebration, saying:

"History is a relay of revolutions; the torch of idealism is carried by the revolutionary group until this group becomes an establishment, and then quietly the torch is put down to wait until a new revolutionary group picks it up for the next leg of the run.  Thus the revolutionary cycle goes on...

wow, you don't say.   Go on...

...I believe that man is about to learn that the most practical life is the moral life and that the moral life is the only road to survival."

That last bit sounds real good until we recognize the context.

It should be understood that when Alinsky speaks of this "moral life," he makes the distinction to embrace such changes as a group, fully organized as a community; it is neither rooted, or cultivated, from the seeds of self-reliance and personal responsibility of the individual according to this nation's original intent .  

And to that end, this bad influence shows up when our current president speaks of being "my brother's keeper..." and when a certain first lady (Clinton) chimed in, saying, "it takes a village."   Just two out of the many Alinsky students gazing up to the heaven's with contempt, questioning everything, all the while making a mockery of our foundation in the every day.

Going a totally new direction (but not really), here's a link that encapsulates the changes afoot -- and it comes out of NASA of all places.

Top of the list --  according to NASA -- of all things leading to total collapse of civilization as we know it?  The immoral action of income inequality and the immoral depletion of natural resources.

Job would tell us to get on our knees and pray.

Make it a Good Day, G

oh and you bet...

this girl's got plenty more to say, to cynics and comrades alike.  come back now, ya' hear