The Wonder Springs Chronicle

Consumption — Creation: Part 1; History to the Present

17 August 2011

Volume 13, Issue 34

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You can’t know where you are headed, if you don’t know where you are, and where you have come from.

— Anonymous

How about one man’s brief description of that time continuum reality. In reference to the above quotation, we are all free, actually required by our humanness, to construct our own personal reality worldview.

Mine starts with God miraculously creating the heavens and the earth, not all that long ago. A global flood and a following ice age with resultant massive alluvial deposits extensively reworked this creation.

Mankind can make minor improvements upon this creation to allow for the development of civilization and cultures.

Capitalism, as it grew out of a Scottish-English-American response to the Age of Discovery, was essentially the most viable of those natural creative opportunities for mankind to improve human culture by creating real diverse wealth-producing enterprises, with accompanying freedoms, including the freedom from want.

With the rise of material evolutionary thought and the closing of the physical frontier, mankind believed that we could, and needed to, come up with a process to improve upon natural capitalism, so that human societies and cultures could continue to develop unchecked by physical limitations imposed by natural law.

In the twentieth century, a number of these improvements were tested; communism, socialism, national socialism, fascism, laissez faire markets, crony crapitalism (sic), material stateism, liberal progressivism, to name a few.

Once the concept of money was divorced from its requirement to function solely as a medium of exchange for goods and services, and without any ties to the real world, except as a means to facilitate global trade, in the early twenty-first century money evolved or morphed into a global deistic cancer.

In order to appease this behemoth god, nations states of the world are now sacrificing their civilizations and their cultures, on the altar of austerity and deleveraging; all the while money continues to grow and consume the hopes of humans, through economic bubbles and following bursting busts.

Yet when you look at it seriously, these events are nothing more than primitive paganish sacrifices to the gods of the dark mysteries of natural law; deep things the priests of evolving enlightened understanding can no longer interpret or discern.

Hence humanity has reached the limit of creative abilities within the closed system of atheistic materialism.

This is where we are. Now where are we headed?

“Heaven helps those who help themselves.” — Benjamin Franklin

In his farewell address to the nation on 11 January 1989, Ronald Reagan ended his presidency with another his oft quotations about America being a shining city on a hill:

"I've spoken of the shining city all my political life…. And how stands the city on this winter night? … After 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true to the granite ridge, and her glow has held no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home."

“How’s that hopey-changey stuff working out for ya!” — Sarah Palin

While house sitting in Spokane last week, I watched with interest the Republican candidates debate. Needless to say, everyone — molded within the image of the Gipper, acknowledged his or her adherence to this vision of the shining city as America’s dream.

Furthermore when coupled with Franklin’s extra-biblical quotation above, you have, not only the historic American political slogan, but also her basic religious catechesis.

On Saturday, while the citizens of Iowa were voting to give Michele Bachmann a straw-pool victory, with Congressman Ron Paul as a strong second — back in South Carolina, Texas governor Rick Perry was casting his hat into the Republican presidential wantabe ring. Looking at Perry’s recent religious past, and his association with members of the New Apostolic Reformation, you must assume that the governor also is at least a disciple, if not a prophet, or an apostle, of this historic American political-religious worldview.

Before we get too heavy into the Republican pietism, to be fair and balanced, it must be noted that president Obama is touring the American heartland this week, not campaigning (for sure?), but a bus trip, in million dollar buses, promoting his vision of the American political-religious worldview, of social justice and the redistribution of wealth as his evangel; sadly just the message of twentieth century Liberal American Protestantism and Roman Catholic theological realities.

Getting back to the Republicans, for the first time in history we have two, very well connected Mormons in the race. Why there are two, with such stellar Mormon credentials, begs the question is there some sort of internal riff within the Latter Day Saints theocracy, or just a freedom of choice, between probably the two most mainstream politicians in the Republican field.

Mormonism, which was founded in America’s Second Great Awakening; to say the least, has a distinct and unique understanding of America’s past, present and future. However, if it comes down to a choice between Barack Obama and either Mitt Romney or John Huntsman II, the Independent and Republican voters will probably side with the paraphrase of Martin Luther’s famous remark: “I would rather be ruled by a competent Mormon (Turk in Luther’s statement) than an incompetent Christian.”

Currently, among Republican political-religious frontrunners, that leaves Representative Michele Bachmann. Until recently the Bachmann’s were members of a church in a distinctly conservative Lutheran denomination, as such, it can be generally understood that the denomination does not hold to either of the doctrines of the American political-religious worldview. From this writer’s perspective that is a good thing.

However, should she be the Republican nominee, her lack of true executive experience will give voters the choice of replacing a sitting president, who has yet to understand what he is doing and if he did, his OJT still hasn’t changed that reality — with one with a similar track record. Furthermore, since her denomination doesn’t allow women pastors, one would wonder about her denomination’s historic religious standing, as a head of a national state?

Condensing and composting all this; are we to believe that any of the current field of Republicans, or president Obama, are capable of restoring past American political-religious reality and just let the better future evolve from past mistakes?

It seems that all the candidates want to go back to the twentieth century (or before for Romney and Huntsman) for their talking points; therefore we must assume these doctrines also house their solutions.

It looks like the courts may soon overturn the individual mandate, (to purchase insurance) included in ObamaCare. Yet it will be after the 2012 election, as the new sitting president, before any of the Republican field actually can begin to repeal its provisions. Yet the spinning, prayer wheel mantra, continues: Repeal ObamaCare, repeal ObamaCare. Because of costs and bureaucratic inertia this will eventually need to be done no matter the ultimate Supreme Court decision.

But what does that mean in the past, present, and in future reality?

While president Obama continues to whine about the mess he inherited, and the growing economic values his administration has created, if it were not for recent bad luck, things would be much better now. What we are finding out however, the pre-Obama disasterous American healthcare reality, under ObamaCare, is quickly becoming an economic and bureaucratic holocaust.

The American healthcare system that Obama was bequeathed, within the developed world was the most expensive, the best — if you had insurance, and if you didn’t, well those wonderful insurance provisions came with your requirement to get a real job and become an Industrial Age specialist in government or the global corporate structure. If you didn’t, or couldn’t fit within that model, there was always charity or Medicaid for the very poor, and medical bankruptcy for those independent primitives who were unwilling or unable to game the system.

In broad detail, American healthcare in 2008 can best be described as: a cartel of medical crony crapitalism with interlocking relationships among pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment and disposables suppliers, insurance companies, trial lawyers, medical facilities, government bureaucrats, politicians and lobbyists to name a few.

With the passage of ObamaCare that cartel, became codified and institutionalized into the national infrastructure. Actually it became the national infrastructure; because as it is implemented all other infrastructure anywhere within the broadest national framework, will need to come to the ObamaCare altar and leave a continual substantial financial offering.

So what do the Republicans propose when ObamaCare becomes unsustainable through judicial review or over turn, repeal, or energetic or economic collapse?

“Well, we Republicans propose to reinstate the pre-ObamaCare disaster, except of course for tort reform, being able to buy insurance across state lines, block grants to states for Medicaid, maybe medical savings accounts (if they don’t cost too much and if we can cut taxes at the same time). We will restructure Medicare so that it won’t be so expensive, (except we can’t do anything that will raise taxes, or any type of real structural income tax reform).

So how long is this great Republican legislative agenda going to take, provided you have a majority in the House of Representatives, a filibuster proof Senate, and a strong fiscal and political conservative serving as president?

“Oh maybe five years or so. But remember we will just be getting started, in reducing the size of government at all levels, especially the Federal government. Passing and ratifying a national Balanced Budget to the Constitution. Reducing and making a significant down payment on the national debt (over ten years), while at the same time enacting more supply side progressive income tax cuts, while allowing everyone to keep their home interest deduction and charitable contributions.

“Yes sir and madam, you need to vote a straight Republican ticket to allow us to change this nation for the better again! Thank you Jesus, for helping us restore the shining city on a hill!

However into this progressive continuum from a healthcare disaster, to a healthcare catastrophe, back toward the disaster, why don’t we do something constructive before the final catastrophe? That is propose national catastrophic healthcare for every American. Set a dollar limit where real catastrophic kicks in, describe what is covered, and pay for it with a national revenue base, such as a dedicated national sales tax.

After thinking about it for the last couple of weeks, we could give that sales tax a familiar progressive, yet libertarian spin. For instance we could levy a double portion on fast food restaurants, a triple portion on cigarettes, tobacco products and drinking alcohol, a ten-multiplier portion on “illegal drugs” and corn based ethanol for fuel, a double portion on organic foods (because only rich people can afford to buy them) etcetera.

Furthermore this way we could replace the current Washington DC healthcare cancerous establishment with just one healthcare checkbook and no lobbying institution. Then, what to tax or what not to tax; will finally be just a billion dollar question!

Seriously, it looks like the future of the American political-religious worldview is running out of gas. The simple reason for this is the reliance of Acts of Man to solve every problem for a century. After World War II and into the Vietnam era, we started giving the civilian economy a little formal stimulant boost, because Americans are worth it, for we are exceptional in our own eyes.

On August 13, 1971, Tricky Dick, president Richard Nixon, began the national and international addiction to economic, performance enhancing drugs. This was kicked up a notch and then a couple more as Alan Greenspan, succeeded in replacing the New Deal drug use, with Laissez Faire anabolic steroids. First there was the tech bubble, then the housing bubble, and now the logical conclusion, the money bubble; all thought to make the national and the global economies stronger, creating a global league of economic supermen (sic) through leveraged debt and the best creative solutions (schemes) that can be created in the wickedness of the Acts of Man.

All common mankind can do, when left to this money hubris, is to live through a real continuing historical Greek tragedy, literally today, just watching the consuming of our cultures’ very human reasons for existence.

We have used again this week, our creative solution to the current healthcare disaster, and its pending catastrophe, to provide a creative answer. We bring it forth not so much as a great panacea, that will be accepted by either parties, and definitely not by the money that attempts to continually build upon the failing status quo. Rather we bring it up, as an example of a solution to keep our Acts of Man from continually being the “can being kicked down the road, until it falls off a cliff.”

Next week we shall attempt to move beyond the Acts of Man into creative Acts from God, which are by definition not limited to bad weather, physical calamities, and any other things we don’t want to take the time or effort to understand.