As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, I want to start by saying that I am incredibly thankful for all of the things God has blessed my with, and to acknowledge that I all too often fail to thank Him, instead of taking credit for myself.
Due to the fact that I want to prioritize my time over the next few days, I will be checking in here intermittently. I'll try to at least post comments, and might interact some if time allows.
"Here's a reality based question that I'd like to see you address some time"
I guess you've been too busy not answering my questions or proving your claims to be true to ask it.
": Qanon... Do you agree that they are insane,"
I'll
start by saying that QAnon, is something that I consider to be such a
nothingburger that I've invested no time in researching it. If you are
going to claim they are "insane", please show me the specific evidence
of insanity. I've seen nothing that would lead me to that conclusion,
but I also haven't looked. I'm sure you've done extensive research on
them and have lots of evidence.
"perhaps cultic"
Given the qualifications above, perhaps. Of course, I'd argue that many quasi mainstream movements are cultic.
"conspiracy theorists"
Again, given the above, probably. But so are the Holocaust deniers.
"who should not be trusted"
Again,
I can't speak to the trustworthiness of each individual follower, nor
am I willing to make this reckless sort of broad brushing of an entire
group of people I know very little about.
"and that they should not be supported by white evangelicals the way they are?"
I
have absolutely no idea what you consider to be "evangelicals", so have
no way to asses your question. I personally am unaware of any
"evangelicals" who are "supporters", but it's not something that's on my
radar.
I'll say that there has been a gradual trend among some
evangelicals to move away from things like discernment, apologetics, and
studies of that nature. Given that, I doesn't surprise me when
"evangelicals" are misled by all sorts of false gospels.
Since,
I suspect this is an attempt to further divert this thread from it's
topic and from your glaring failure to answer questions or prove your
claims. I will transfer this to it's own post and will move and
comments there as well.
I've been pretty silent on the results of the election, because I've chosen to follow my usual practice of waiting for more information rather than jumping to conclusions. Given that, I'll hit some high points.
1. It seems likely that there was some degree of voting irregularity and the fact that most of it is concentrated in heavily DFL districts in heavily DFL cities, in swing states seems suspicious to me.
2. Having said that, I don't believe that we will see enough irregularity to put Trump over the top.
3. This notion that the media or other parties call elections in any sort of official sense seems problematic.
4. While I believe that the Trump campaign should avail themselves of whatever legal avenues are open to them, I also believe that Trump and his surrogates are hurting themselves with their idiotic social media outbursts and with their refusal to work with the Biden transition team.
5. Hearing people who believe that Stacey Abrams won the GA governors election, who have been insisting for 4 years that Clinton won in 2016, and who've been shouting about election interference, all of a sudden change their tunes, is amusing.
6. While I think that Biden is a hack, I fail to see how two years of gridlock is a particularly bad thing at this point. The likelihood of any SCOTUS members leaving is slim, and I have no problem with a GOP led senate engaging in the same tactics that the DFL led house has been engaging on for the last 4 years.
7. I firmly believe that it is long past time for a complete overhaul of how we vote in national elections, and in how the results of national elections are reported by the news media. I thin that the single most important aspect of national elections should be the integrity of the process and of the results. It seems like this notion shouldn't be a partisan issue, but I suspect it will be.
8. Some thoughts on reforms.
a. Establish a national holiday (or a two day national holiday) for voting.
b. Require paper ballots.
c. Eliminate the random mail in ballots, encourage people to vote in person.
d. Adopt a system to pre-count absentee, military, and other ballots, segregate them securely until election day, then feed them through the counting machines on election day.
e. Adopt some means to eliminate the various networks from "calling" states until a set period of time after the polls close. In a perfect world, the secretary of state of each state would "call" the election instead of the media.
f. Acknowledge the fact that certain people who live in the US are ineligible to vote, and that if those people vote that their ballots should not be counted.
I'm sure that there are some other things that I've missed, and that could be tweaked, but this election was a cluster #$%& and anyone who is honest should be able to acknowledge that.
The bottom line is that I'm not someone who puts my faith in governments or presidents. I'm generally convinced that our founders set up a system that can stand 4 or 8 years of just about anything, so I just don't get that invested in the outcome of any one election.
I suspect that the next 4 years are going to move between shit show and gridlock, and that the Biden lovers are going to spend a lot of time trying to explain away the shit show aspects of his administration. While patting themselves on the back for the first POC VP, and hoping that the fact that they are the same people who didn't support her for POTUS doesn't get brought up.
A huge problem with 'progressives' is they are always 100% certain that they are moving society in a positive direction.
And they lack the humility, tolerance, and self-awareness to consider that they might be collectively running us off a cliff.
Anti Trump/Pro Biden leftists violently attack peaceful protesters after DC rally for Trump.
It's refreshing to hear Patrice Cullors and BLM be so upfront about the quid pro quo they expect from the Biden administration for turning out black voters. The fact that she is so open about the fact that those black votes come with demands (or expectations), is refreshing. Given the failure of Biden and P-BO to address these grievances during the 8 year P-BO administration, and Kamala's history of throwing blacks in prison, I'm not sure what they expect. It'll also be interesting to see what the explicit or implicit threat is.
All in all, I say bravo to Patrisse and her brave followers for getting in early and publicly and demanding their quid pro quo so vocally.
Back when I was in the world of non-profit affordable housing, I came to a realization that the most important thing we were providing our home buyers was not the shelter of a roof and walls, but access to equity. The ability to access the accumulated value of the house for other purposes.
One other thing struck me that is related. At one point, our leadership decided that those of us tasked with actually building the houses, also needed to double as propagandists. We were given a series of modules designed to impart information that would hopefully inspire our volunteers to even higher levels of commitment to the cause. Despite that, there was a module that discussed the topic of secure tenure and it's effects on the poor. Because of my involvement with some blancs trying to buy property in Haiti, the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, and a conversation about why vast areas of the NW zone were vacant, this topic interested me.
Yesterday as I was doing some reading, I came across a phenomenal stat. The estimated equity in the real estate that is held, but not owned, worldwide is in excess of 9 billion dollars. That's right, we have people who have lived on a piece of property for years, built a home, tilled the soil, and potentially started a business, but do not own the property. There are three reasons for this that I've encountered in my experience, although there are probably more. 1. The government owns the land and refuses to sell it. 2. The land was purchased or gifted to an absentee owner who has no interest in selling it, even though the land isn't necessarily productive. 3. Government corruption in the process of buying and gaining title to real estate.
What struck me was that we have people sitting on 9 billion dollars of "equity" worldwide, but who can't access that equity. If it was possible to grant those people clear title to the property the live on, one wonders what level of economic activity could be unleashed. The most obvious example can be stated in both a positive and negative fashion. 1. Negative. Why would anyone invest their limited resources in improving or using land that they don't own? 2. Positive. If these people were given title to this land, what would they do to increase it's value and productivity or would they use the equity for education to start a business, or for better farm equipment/seed?
I'm not a mathematician, but it seems like the simple act of confirming people in the secure title to the land they already live and work on, could be a significant path to additional reductions in global poverty.
This also ties into a lot of conversations that we've been having around the lack of generational wealth in the black community in our cities. I took a CE course last year on the topic, and am even more convinced that the FDR policy of redlining to prevent minority home ownership is one of the significant causes of the lack of wealth in the black community. I'd suggest that it's possible that if you look at certain parts of the country, that this policy to deprive black families of this means to accumulate generational wealth and equity could be (arguably) the most significant contributor to the current economic situation in the black community today.
On the global stage, we can certainly advocate for the confirmation of clear title (and the legal systems to protect it) for those who don't have it. It seems like a worthwhile goal and one that can benefit millions of people. Here in the US, it's a much tougher solution and I'm not sure how I'd approach it on a macro scale. On a micro scale, there are some things I'm doing to help black families purchase homes, but I'm sure there's more. I'm just not sure what that looks like.
1. For some reason, I think that Trump is going to win tomorrow.
2. I think that the % of black voters that vote for Trump, as well as the pro-life democrats who either stay home or vote Trump will play a significant role.
3. If Trump wins, I won't be surprised to see rioting and destruction.
4. If Trump loses, and there is any rioting or destruction, I predict that it will be quelled relatively quickly and condemned by Trump.
Obviously these are predictions, and there is no reason to attack them or me. If you have additional predictions, they'll get posted in the comments.
