Put on your big girl pants

This may be the only sympathetic feeling I have for Kamala Harris: speaking in public. I'd bring along a guy for support, too (Walz). I'd let someone else speak for me if I could, too.  I'd make up rules to benefit only me, too. I spoke to my church as a teen-ager after a conference; I spoke at my professional organization's national meeting when I was the president; I spoke about how to use the library at freshman orientations in the Veterinary college for a number of years; when the WWW came online, I gave a seminar on how to use it, and a few other times. It was painful each time. I don't like public speaking. But she signed on for the job and she should start behaving like a big girl. We know she can, because she spoke to her sorority sisters rather than do her Vice President duties in meeting with Netanyahu of Israel a few days after she was anointed by the party to take Biden's place.

Prayers for June 23 from Magnificat magazine

 

Some pep talks are not truthful—especially ones about truth

I saw this in the daily dose of coping encouragement in the OSU medical newsletter—which these days is mostly about Covid19.

“We can banish fear by realizing the truth.

“Am I afraid to be alone?” This fear can be subdued by the realization that we are surrounded by people each and every day.

People who care about us are all around us every single day. They’re willing to support us at the drop of the hat — but only if we let them know we need their support.

The number of people willing to support us is inexhaustible and unfailing, as long as we engage in open communication making clear our need for their support. Funny thing, when we support each other: Our bonds grow stronger, and we’re much more successful in our endeavors.”

Think about that first sentence in the context of what we see every day.

We knew the truth about glioblastoma when our son was diagnosed on October 1, 2019.  We knew he would soon die and that our lives changed forever on that day.  That was the truth.  It didn’t banish our fear.

We saw enough evidence about mail in ballots and middle of the night vote counting for the November 3 election to know the truth.  It hasn’t banished fear about where our system of government is heading.  The truth is not banishing fear, it’s causing us to lose our basic freedoms.

I’m looking out my window at fresh snow, I know it will be extremely cold and slick when I go to the grocery store.  That’s truth.  But I’m still afraid to drive there.

And there are NOT inexhaustible and unfailing people surrounding us and available to help at the drop of the hat.  Those people are locked in their homes.   True, this was written to support the highly stressed medical workers dealing with a pandemic who see people every day. but imagine throwing that guilt trip on people already stressed to the limit.  And although sometimes just the right person comes along to help or support, that’s the exception, which is why we often mention it in our prayer groups and Bible studies (now available only on ZOOM).

Platitudes and cheap grace.  That’s what a lot of coping stragies are.  This advice was followed up with a video of horses playing with rubber balls.  Cute.  But it didn’t banish the fear based on Truth.

The President tamps down fear

Joel Ross of Citadel Realty Advisors opines on 10/8: "Trump did a good thing for everyone by getting sick. He showed the virus is not a death penalty, and now there are drugs to deal with it if caught early. The reality, despite the press pushing FEAR, is that most people do NOT get sick at all, or not very sick, and if you do get it, the chance of dying is 1% or less, and if you are healthy, it is tiny so long as it is caught very early. That is not much different than with most illness. If you act early, there is often a protocol to cure, or at least mitigate it. The media, of course, could not let Trump give a message of hope to everyone. The advances in medicine are terrific now, and much more is coming thanks to AI and other technologies."

Do not be afraid

This past week I've come to the conclusion that perhaps the President has understood the seriousness of this virus better than the scientists, his task force, Congress, the governors, the Mayors, the naysayers, his enemies in the press and even his most ardent supporters. He knows this is a battle that can't be won by science or talking heads on TV. It's a battle of the heart and mind.

The Bible refers to "fear" hundreds of times. First and most important, Fear of the Lord. Worship, respect, prayer.

Second, there are the "Fear not" passages. Command. Advice. Comfort.

Millions and millions of people across our nation and the world were praying for President Trump this week. Even Nancy Pelosi! From their homes, in their cars, in parades, on the sidewalks outside the hospital, on social media. Catholics, Orthodox, Evangelicals, Fundamentalists and non-denominational Christians were united. People of other faiths, Jews, Hindus, Muslims and the "Nones." If they are serious about their faith, even Christians who don't like him, his personality and policies were praying for his recovery. That was the first use of Fear as used in the Bible.

And when President Trump left the hospital benefitting from high tech, new drugs and some low tech tender care, he told the nation and the world not to fear, don't be afraid of the virus. I think he knows who the real enemy is, and it isn't the virus. It's been the same advice every great leader through the centuries has known instinctively, or by studying history, or through divine guidance.

“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7

“I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.” Psalm 34:4

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." Matthew 6:34

The hateful media ridiculed and criticized him for telling us not to be afraid of the virus. Facebook and Twitter were flooded with hate and despair. Would they have said that to FDR as he faced Hitler in the 1940s, or Eisenhower after his severe health problems in both terms in the 1950s? Did they tell JFK it's just too scary to make space flight trials to the moon? They know only the fear, anxiety and worry of the American people can accomplish what their party has intended all along. Retreat, defeat, and surrender.

People are waiting too long for medical help

Here's how the virus kills--fear. In Michigan, 62% of the ambulance runs were too late--people feared Covid19 at the hospital. Stroke and cardiac coming in much too late.
(figure from radio report, but this article confirms)

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/05/05/er-visits-plummet-amid-pandemic-we-know-more-people-dying-home/3067993001/

Are you a coward or just a racist?

Have you seen the hand lettered signs "Silence is violence?" It's the opposite of what it says. That means you aren't allowed to speak your truth at all, you can only bow and scrape. In fact, your silence is compliance and acceptance of the racism myth and that as a white person you are evil. "Silence is compliance." A Catholic priest in Carmel, Indiana, is the Bonhoeffer of our times. He's telling it like it is. He's not being silent. He actually called out the rioters and looters. Called them names! Melted a few snowflakes. Support him by not being silent about this insanity.

I realize you may not be retired like I am, you don’t have a monthly pension, so you're afraid to speak out--might loose your job. Or friends. It doesn't matter if my pastor sees my criticism of the church--he has no idea who I am. You tell me on the QT that you support everything I write but, . . you must be silent. I do understand, really, and thanks for the private messages. I'm not posting for glory or likes. I post the truth. But please stop being cowards. You are letting them destroy Columbus (or whatever city you live in). You know they won't stop with the removal of the Columbus statue, or the stand down order of the police, don't you? That just encourages them. It's like whacking a hornets nest--they won't go away. And NO, you are not safe in UA or Worthington or Hilliard.

When OSU or your high school says we need more staff for IED (Inclusion, equity, diversity) classes and more reprograming of your kids' minds, JUST SAY NO! Pull them out. Don't pay ridiculous tuition and fees. Do not let the Controllers of BLM/ANTIFA turn your children's minds to mush. Your life matters, too. Learn from history. How do you think a few overseers were able to control 50 slaves in the fields of the plantation if not through fear and intimidation? How were the Nazis able to round up thousands of Jews and keep them compliant?

No country in the world has offered hundreds of nationalities and religions and ethnic groups the opportunity to live side by side under a Constitution that says they rule the government, not the other way around. Stand up and be proud.

This isn't about slavery in the 17th century. It isn't about microaggression or unconscious bias. This isn't about Police. Those are tools they use against you. Don't let them reprogram you.

Silence is compliance. Don’t be a coward.

Bookworm says:

“It turns out that not all of us are news junkies. She [clerk in the grocery story who still has a job] didn’t know what was going on in California or Michigan or any other state that has placed people under lockdown in their own homes.

“How can they do that? That makes no sense. People have bills to pay. We have to work.”

Her words struck me strongly because I’ve been struggling to articulate the different emotional responses I’m seeing from the left and the right when it comes to responding to the Wuhan virus. The leftists are saying that the lockdown should continue for another year or two, and are accusing those who want normal life to return of being living embodiments of the Grim Reaper, determined to kill everyone through their greed, carelessness, and a refusal to recognize facts that can derive only from watching Fox News."

Bookworm (and although anonymous, I think the writer is a she) goes on to opine about liberals and how they feel about death.

"Consistently, lefties are driven by a raw emotional fear of death that the more sophisticated later dress up as sophisticated reasoning about controlling a pandemic. The sophistication is a veneer, though, because the fact that the models have all proven wrong is irrelevant. Their lizard brains are activated and won’t be calmed until the disease risk is reduced to zero."

". . . the leftist fear of death drives everything. It’s what allows their leaders to manipulate them about climate change (never mind that people ultimately do better in a warmer world), about guns (never mind that guns in America save more lives than they take), about organic v. non-organic food (never mind that if all farming were organic people would starve), socialized medicine (never mind that socialized medicine gives people access not care), about serving in the military (never mind that if we are undefended, many more can die in a sustained attack against America), and so on."

http://www.bookwormroom.com/2020/04/19/the-different-mindsets-political-parties-have-towards-the-wuhan-virus/

A note on Obamacare, June 23, 2017

“But what is worse than forcing the poor to buy a product which makes millions for the wealthy investors and face a fine and jail if they don't buy it? What is worse than destroying the health and safety network of millions just so everyone can have a form of Medicaid? Strange values indeed. All yammered by the media to mislead and get Democrats another term in office.” Norma Bruce

And yet it was used as a threat for the mid-terms of 2018 to frighten people and bad mouth Republicans.

Unreasonable fear

Democrat voters. Stop torturing yourselves with visions of gas chambers. Donald Trump isn't the problem--it's your party's platform and your president's policies. We've got race riots, snowflake blizzards, falsified VA wait times, IRS scandals, mass shootings at malls, military bases, office parties and gay night clubs, millions suffering because of Obamacare, bathroom rage, increasing assaults against police, unaccompanied children up 78% this year, schools failing our kids--and that's with YOUR team, the current administration. Trump is selecting his team--you probably know most of them, and they haven't arrested or imprisoned you in their current jobs, so calm down.

And now President Obama is blaming Fox for his own failures.  For eight years Obama has been whining about Fox. He's got ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, MSNBC and CNN--even ESPN has flipped, plus the online Daily Beast, Huffington Post and Vox among other millennial run bases, but he wants all the marbles. Democrats have no bench, and he and Pelosi are the reason. They've relied on his popularity (not his policies, which have failed), and they've got nothing.  He's got the biggest bully pulpit in the world, even has his tantrums at the UN and in foreign nations, but it's Fox's fault? And they say Trump is childish!

I don't hang out in bars, where he says Fox plays all the time.  And I don't think he does either. On our Friday night dates it's only sports events on the screens at Rusty Bucket. At the airport and the doctors' office, it's always CNN or ads.  You ridiculed the very people who elected you, and I think at least a few remembered that and learned from it.

Fear

HIV/AIDS JAMA special issue

JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) periodically has a topic specific issue, and July 21, Vol. 304, no.3, was on HIV/AIDS. Not everyone reads medical literature, but if you happen to pick up this title which is held by many public libraries, turn to p. 364, "JAMA Patient Page" first. HIV is a virus that causes a disease, AIDS, and it is primarily but not exclusively, a disease of gay men and IV drug users. Women get it from their male gay spouses and gay boyfriends (don't play games with terms like bi-sexual). Women can then pass it on to other men who are not gay, and to their children during pregnancy and nursing. And even then, that's a very small percentage; most transmission is through gay men. So that's where prevention should start, but that's not the emphasis in this journal because it is not culturally sensitive to expect people to change destructive behavior, unless it is smoking, drinking, overeating, not exercising, not recycling or wife beating. Even though gay sex has caused a world wide epidemic, after a push in the 1980s for closing of bath houses and spreading condoms and mouth dams around, the main stream medical people are too feaful to say, "Stop it."

The patient page clearly says, "Women with HIV infection can transmit the virus to their babies during pregnancy or delivery or through their breast milk."  It says nothing  "clear" about gay sex and the transmission of disease, and instead tip toes through "bodily fluids, including semen, " using condoms, and not having sexual contact with infected persons, including oral, anal or vaginal.

Richard's Fear

He writes a blog called Three Score and Ten or More, and sometimes calls himself an old coot. He's seen and done it all--was a Mormon missionary as a young man in Finland, had a career in theater, he's a father, grandfather, husband, handyman, traveler, and writer of a blog. Recently he wrote about fear--with a lead in about things that go bump in the night through out our life times. Every thing from stage fright to jumping out of an airplane. Then he gets to his current fear--for our way of life and country.

"These have always been the kinds of things that I felt were frightening, but they are immediate things, and you either survive them or not (obviously I did). When I say I am frightened, I don’t fear an immediate strike of lightening, but my fear is as vivid, just not as immediate and my fear is not of personal death, but for the death of the type of nation I have come to love.

A number of things which have happened since the election of President Obama which have made me nervous and distrustful, but I never felt an emotion that approached real fear until the administration launched its attack on the Fox News network, (The Fox Network such as it is, holds no special place in my heart) an act, which, if upheld, essentially vitiates any hope we have for freedom of expression, a central focus of our Constitution and our way of life. Political correctness forces have been picking at this freedom for some time, but this is a frontal assault on the core of Bill of Rights. Almost at the same time it was revealed that our country (as one of a group) has endorsed a United Nations resolution that could become law in our country if some have their way, making public speech or criticism of an faith or religious group an international crime (the article I read implies that it identified this form of criticism as a form of terrorism).

The implications are mind boggling and hold more threat to our existence as it is than could be completely imagined.

I was calming down on this subject, but as I sat in our Cardiologist’s office, the President was shown being interviewed by some lady newsperson and his answers to her softball questions were so self convicting of Obama’s feeling that any organized criticism of his programs deserve stifling that my feeling rose again."

He has calmed down some now and recently wrote about avocadoes--still, he reflects the concerns of many.

The H1N1 Pandemic?

It seems we have a pandemic because the definition of pandemic was changed?

"Before the arrival of novel A/H1N1 virus, pandemics were said to occur when a new subtype of influenza virus to which humans have no immunity enters the population, begins spreading widely, and causes severe illness . . . But the 2009 pandemic, taken as a whole, bears little resemblance to the forecasted pandemic. Pandemic A/H1N1 virus is not a new subtype but the same subtype as seasonal A/H1N1 that has been circulating since 1977. . . Experts are unsure that the 2009 pandemic—which the World Health Organization presently characterises as moderate—will be any worse than seasonal flu." from article by Peter Doshi, doctor student, MIT, BMJ 2009;339:b3471

HT Junkfood Sciene

Having a chat with the Devil about fear

In 1527 Martin Luther provided some theological and practical thoughts on how Christians should respond to the plague. The Black Death (bubonic plague) had swept across Europe several times since its initial appearance in 1350 brought there through trade with Asia. It was discovered in Wittenburg in August, the university was closed, and the students sent home. Luther was busy so he stayed, but in November replied to a pastor on what Christians should do. Luther was always very practical, and of course, people of that era didn't know about bacteria (lived in the intestines of rats and could be transmitted to animals or humans through fleas) or how the disease was spread, but he did know what Scripture said about helping one's neighbor.

He provides almost a script in confronting fears, horror and disgust when caring for the sick (it was a truly ugly, disgusting way to die). His advice is useful when confronting fear of any kind:

When anyone is overcome by horror and repugnance in the presence of a sick person he should take courage and strength in the firm assurance that it is the devil who stirs up such abhorrence, fear, and loathing in this heart. He is such a bitter, knavish devil that he not only unceasingly tries to slay and kill, but also takes delight in making us deathly afraid, worried, and apprehensive so that we should regard dying as horrible and have no rest or peace all through our life. And so the devil would excrete us out of this life as he tries to make us despair of God, become unwilling and unprepared to die, and, under the stormy and dark sky of fear and anxiety, make us forget and lose Christ, our light and life, and desert our neighbor in his troubles. We would sin thereby against God and man; that would be the devil's glory and delight. Because we know that it is the devil's game to induce such fear and dread, we should in turn minimize it, take such courage as to spite and annoy him and send those terrors right back to him. And we should arm ourselves with this answer to the devil:


"Get away, you devil, with your terrors! Just because you hate it, I'll spite you by going the more quickly to help my neighbor, I'll pay no attention to you.

I've got two heavy blows to use against you. The first one is that I know that helping my neighbor is a deed well-pleasing to God and all the angles; by this deed I do God's will and render true service and obedience to him. All the more so because if you hate it so and are so strongly opposed to it, it must be particularly acceptable to God. I'd do this readily and gladly if I could please only one angel who might look with delight on it. But now that it pleases my Lord Jesus Christ and the whole heavenly host because it is the will and command of God, my Father, then how could any fear of you cause me to spoil such joy in heaven or such delight for my Lord? Or how could I, by flattering you, give you and your devils in hell reason to mock and laugh at me? No, you'll not have the last word! If Christ shed his blood for me and died for me, why should I not expose myself to some small dangers for his sake and disregard this feeble plague?

If you can terrorize, Christ can strengthen me.

If you can kill, Christ can give life.

If you have poison in your fangs, Christ has far greater medicine.

Should not my dear Christ, with his precepts, his kindness and all his encouragement, be more important in my spirit than you, roguish devil, with your false terrors in my weak flesh? God forbid! Get away, devil. Here is Christ and here am I, his servant in his work. Let Christ prevail! Amen.

The second blow against the devil is God's mighty promise by which he encourages those who minister to the needy. He says in Psalm 41:1-3, "Blessed is he who considers the poor. The Lord will deliver him in the day of trouble. The Lord will protect him and keep him alive; the Lord will bless him on earth and not give him up to the will of his enemies. The Lord will sustain him on his sickbed. In his illness he will heal all his infirmities."


Are not these glorious and mighty promises of God heaped up upon those who minister to the needy? What should terrorize us or frighten us away from such great and divine comfort? The service we can render to the needy is indeed such a small thing in comparison with God's promises and rewards that St. Paul says to Timothy, "Godliness is of value in every way, and it holds promise both for the present life and for the life to come" I Tim. 4:8. . . [and continues for more pages] from "Whether one may flee from a deadly plague," in Martin Luther's basic theological writings, ed. by Timothy F. Lull, Fortress Press, 1989, p. 736-755

A note with this passage says Luther suffered a severe attack of cerebral anemia in 1527 followed by deep depression which may be one reason for the mild tone!

The 2005 edition of this title has been google scanned.